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How to remove yellowing from an old Atari case


mimo

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But definitely getting better.....

 

As you can see the part of the top of the 1020 is not discovered, or at least a lot less....

 

As a test, I only covered the middle beam to see if you can actually "overdo" it....we'll see :)

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Edited by Level42
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when I did my apple IIc eons ago using just drug store grade liquid + oxyclean + a good spring day's worth of sunlight it was restored within 8 hours, I say something is not meshing

 

edit heck when I did my 65XE it was only out in the sun for ~10 hours submerged in the weak mix, and though the key's are still slightly yellow they did go from t-shirt armpit stain to only slightly beige

 

edit edit

 

maybe its the light? I have seen people use plant grow lights, I have no clue what the difference tween that and the one use used is though

Edited by Osgeld
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Osgeld, I think you are right....actually I am sure it is the difference between sunlight and this tiny artificial lamp.

 

First of all the sun undoubtably puts more UV light onto anything outside than a lamp like this can ever do.

Then added to that, there is the temperature. Not sure where you live, but 8 bit guy lives in Texas AFAIK and even on the hottest days here in The Netherlands it will still be WAY cooler than in Texas. (35 degrees is very very extreme here, I guess Texas summer temps are like 40 degrees).

 

However, the good news is that it turned out to be just a matter of patience :):)

 

I had a last look before sleep last night and I was still not happy because I could still see the outside of the 1020 case to be more yellow than the covered parts of the inside. So I decided to let on the light overnight.....

 

The objects had been under the lamp/cover for 21 hours when I turned off the light and the results well.......I can only say it is f-beep-cking AMAZING !!!!

 

The entire plastic is ONE color now....it is near white and IMHO that is exactly how it is supposed to be.

 

The lighting on these pictures is natural (cloudy rainy winter weather) from the left through a window and LED spotlight from the right.

 

You can also see that the middle beam which I also covered with peroxide did NOT turn out lighter than the rest of the untreated covered parts. The entire plastic sim one color, IMHO proving that you can not overdo this process......in fact, you can only UNDERdo this process....if you still have differences and see more yellow parts, you need to do it longer or again.

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Edited by Level42
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Oh by the way, pictures taken with my not so great iPad (old one) camera, no flash in it.

 

You might think there is some streaking near the top left rubber foot of the bottom plate but it's not....the plastic on the bottom does not have the structure like it has on the top and sides, so it's very smooth and shiny and what you see there is merely a reflection.

 

The ST mouse improved a LOT from what it was, but we're still not there. Compare the color of the ball-ring which has been on the underside of course to the top color...and also the entire bottom in fact. The sides are still the "worst" turning the sides up towards the lamp probably will help.

I also "aimed" the most yellow part of the bottom of the 1020 toward the lamp which clearly worked.

 

So the mouse will join a next treatment, at least for some hours....

 

I don't know why, but I realized I should have unassembled the mouse before retrobrighting it, no idea why I didn't do that before....you need to wash off the peroxide after the retrobrighting so prefer not to have the electronics there while rinsing. Same goes for the key section of the 1020...no idea why I left it. Luckily the brown keys (didn't touch them with peroxide) show absolutely no discoloring but again better remove them before rinsing...

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It's amazing how much the blue of that logo suddenly pops out again.....

 

And that is what I meant that retrobrighting isn't the same as (general) bleaching....if everything was bleached equally that blue would have faded.

 

Now...let's sompare the retrobrighted 1020 and mouse with the 600XL again......look.....the colors are almost 100% matched ! Remember that 600XL has never been retrobrighted and to this very day it's conditionmof keys and brown/dark and light parts is if it left the factory yesterday, that is why I love it so much and mad it my main machine (also because it has the "right" keyboard, the one I had BITD and think is most comfortable).

 

Yep, quite a difference from how they were. Yeah it took 21 hours, but what is 21 hours to reverse a process that took about 30 years ? :D

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One more pic where I put the 600XL case at the same height as the top of the 1020.

 

I can see a very very minor difference in that the 600XL is a TINY bit yellower....but hey....untreated since 1983.....and I bet there were color differences between the various XL products from the start....it's called production tolerances....

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That's a happy 1020 right there :D

 

Big thanks to all the people who developed this method of Retrobrighting. I had read about it since the start....but the need to mixup stuff myself kept me from trying it.....

This "ready made" creamy hair hydrogen peroxide makes it so easy....

 

Also big thanks to @Fred_M because I totally copied everything from him ???

 

Next up: Atari Mega STE !!!

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Edited by Level42
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Looks fantastic, but I I still say you can overdo it, as I have personally turned the purple switches from a SNES a pale ashy color, and I have turned a light grey camera case into snow white almost identical to the osbourne ... are you going to do it with your setup? probably not, but yea we have some intense sun here in TN as well

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Looks fantastic, but I I still say you can overdo it, as I have personally turned the purple switches from a SNES a pale ashy color, and I have turned a light grey camera case into snow white almost identical to the osbourne ... are you going to do it with your setup? probably not, but yea we have some intense sun here in TN as well

Yeah after posting that it crossed my mind it was a pretty bold statement with just this one experience.....

 

I guess various colors/paints/ink will respond differently.

 

I know Fred_M ruined a set of 800XL keys with it....but to be honest.....why do any of the brows parts ?

 

On the other side, the 1020 brown keys....I didn't cover them with peroxide but I'm sure they are still in the same "air" but the look exactly the same as the brown front which I did not do anything with except cleaning....

 

Anyway...update.....processing now :)

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Edited by Level42
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Not sure if it's fully done....i don't have a good reference for the ST/XE color....just the edges of this case that have been covered up all those years...

 

Also....it's hard to judge the result in artificial light....

 

 

So I put in the top cover of the Mega STE now and it turned out there was also space for the top cover of my main 1050.....

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have used the same 12% saloon creme that The 8-bit Guy has used, and use the brush. Slap a lot of it on, cover in plastic foil, and put it into a large plastic bin that has 3 x 4ft long LED UV strips mounted (one on each side, and one in the middle). I put keys in a big ziplock bag, add some creme, and move them around so they are covered, and facing up. Leave it on for 24 hours, and so far, I've had not one problem. So far I have done a couple of Commodore 64Cs and 128s, Tandys, a 520ST and a 130XE, and a number of different disk drives. To be honest this seems so bulletproof, I'm not understanding why people still are messing around with heat, sunlight, their own mixtures...

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I have used the same 12% saloon creme that The 8-bit Guy has used, and use the brush. Slap a lot of it on, cover in plastic foil, and put it into a large plastic bin that has 3 x 4ft long LED UV strips mounted (one on each side, and one in the middle). I put keys in a big ziplock bag, add some creme, and move them around so they are covered, and facing up. Leave it on for 24 hours, and so far, I've had not one problem. So far I have done a couple of Commodore 64Cs and 128s, Tandys, a 520ST and a 130XE, and a number of different disk drives. To be honest this seems so bulletproof, I'm not understanding why people still are messing around with heat, sunlight, their own mixtures...

Totally agree !!! This works and works and works....only difference i have ia the UV lamp...it's a fluorescent one but I thought about LEDs too. If you have a link to which ones you bought that would be great.

 

I have one minor thing: just did the back of my Atari SM-146 and it looks like one spot was a bit too close to the lamp...maybe overheated a bit...it just turned up a bit more shiny than the rest but its on the backside...no biggy. Lots of tiny LED strips propably are cooler and produce a more even "all around" UV light when positioned correctly....but the aluminium foil isnt half bad....

 

Im retrobrighting anything even slightly discolored....having 30 year old machines that look like they just left the factory is all brilliant to me.....

Edited by Level42
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Cheers, I'll look for something similar then. We aren't getting much sunlight at the moment here.

 

I'm using the salon 40 vol (12%) hair bleach cream. Its worked quite well so far an a heavily yellowed 800XL case in the overcast daylight. I can only imagine that a lamp like yours would accelerate the process.

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That’s interesting, that’s traditional “black light”, or UV-A light. The lamp I use is UV-B light...apparently both work :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

A word of caution... If you have two halves to a case, DO NOT do one half by itself to see what happens. I tried doing that on a very yellow 850 case,

and now I've tried and tried to get the two halves to match but there is always a small but visible difference.

 

DavidMil

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http://atariage.com/forums/topic/138244-how-to-remove-yellowing-from-an-old-atari-case/?p=3781823

A word of caution... If you have two halves to a case, DO NOT do one half by itself to see what happens. I tried doing that on a very yellow 850 case,

and now I've tried and tried to get the two halves to match but there is always a small but visible difference.

 

DavidMil

 

I did these separately. They're not perfect but hell, I'm 49 years old. I'm not perfect either. But unlike me, they look a lot better than they did until I treated them. :)

 

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That’s interesting, that’s traditional “black light”, or UV-A light. The lamp I use is UV-B light...apparently both work :)

 

*Any* light works. I've done tests:

 

 

The light tests start at 13:24 if you just want to skip to that. The stuff about requiring UV-A or UV-B seems to me to be kind of a myth. 8 Bit Guy did another test with no light but with heat, and that worked too. So you definitely don't need a specific kind of light. I'm not a scientist so I don't know exactly what's going on, but I got the same result with a light that specifically filters out UV-A and UV-B as I did with a light that *only* outputs UV-A and UV-B.

 

To go back to heat, my tests were all done at about 50-60 degrees F. So I had no heat. It seems like you can do it with either light or heat or both.

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*Any* light works. I've done tests:

 

https://youtu.be/xBS_UEV35W4

 

The light tests start at 13:24 if you just want to skip to that. The stuff about requiring UV-A or UV-B seems to me to be kind of a myth. 8 Bit Guy did another test with no light but with heat, and that worked too. So you definitely don't need a specific kind of light. I'm not a scientist so I don't know exactly what's going on, but I got the same result with a light that specifically filters out UV-A and UV-B as I did with a light that *only* outputs UV-A and UV-B.

 

To go back to heat, my tests were all done at about 50-60 degrees F. So I had no heat. It seems like you can do it with either light or heat or both.

Nice video, but I don't agree on #2 and #3.

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