Slashdot Mirror
New Plastic For Old Amigas and Commodores
Ichijo writes: Several years ago, Slashdot reported that the Amiga community had developed a way to restore old, yellowed ABS plastic to like-new condition, and they put the recipe for the gel, dubbed Retr0bright, into the public domain. Since then, it was discovered that the effect of the gel is only temporary, and plastic treated with the gel soon reverts to its original yellowed state even when efforts are made to block it from additional UV light.
Now, Amiga enthusiast Philippe Lang has created a new Kickstarter campaign to design and build new, improved molds for Amiga 1200 housings and do a licensed production run using anti-UV ASA plastic in the original color plus black, transparent, and 9 other colors. His team is also investigating the feasibility of producing new Amiga 1200 keyboards if this campaign succeeds. This follows a successful production run by Commodore 64 enthusiasts of new C64c housings using the original injection molds and new C64 motherboards designed to modern standards and production methods. And a new Amiga 1200 clone motherboard is also in the works.
Now, Amiga enthusiast Philippe Lang has created a new Kickstarter campaign to design and build new, improved molds for Amiga 1200 housings and do a licensed production run using anti-UV ASA plastic in the original color plus black, transparent, and 9 other colors. His team is also investigating the feasibility of producing new Amiga 1200 keyboards if this campaign succeeds. This follows a successful production run by Commodore 64 enthusiasts of new C64c housings using the original injection molds and new C64 motherboards designed to modern standards and production methods. And a new Amiga 1200 clone motherboard is also in the works.
Remember the signatures of the designers that were molded onto the inside of the original Amiga 1000 enclosures? Well, I see an update on that kickstarter page that the new A1200 boxes will get a similar treatment with at least one signature.
I still fondly remember the day back in the mid '80s when I opened up my first Amiga and found those signatures. It showed the designers really cared about what they'd created.
Kind of like the 'easter egg' hidden in a later version of Workbench that after a magic disk/in/out/mouse/press/etc incantation, would put up the message "We made Amiga, they f*cked it up". Implying they == Commodore.
I must dust off my old hardware and check out this kickstarter page in more detail.
You can find new old stock UK-layout Amiga 1200 keyboards on eBay for a reasonable price. All that's missing is the Help key, and the Power/Floppy/HD LEDs.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
No, it's not the UV that's doing it directly.
It's the flame retardants put in the plastic that make it yellow, specifically, Bromine-based retradants. The plastic is mixed with it, and over time the bromine compounds change and brown the plastic, encouraged by UV breakdown of the plastic.
Modern plastic doesn't do that because we don't bother with fire retardants anymore - if you want to see a story that played out like tobacco, lead and now climate change - the big chemical companies did the whole "without flame retardants your house will burn up instantly" thing. Complete with family-friendly lobby groups funded by the chemical companies. In the end, it turns out the health of the children won out especially since the flame retardants, while they worked, didn't really do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Because when the room's on fire anyways...