Check your US black Saturn peripherals.

Any pictures?

 

Thanks for the heads up. I'll check my stuff tomorrow.

 

Has anyone seen this happen on actual controllers yet? It's a shame to see that happen on a rare keyboard, but it's quite plausible that the standard controllers had a different manufacturing process (with different materials) than these oddball low quantity accessories.

 

so the rubber reacts with ABS?

I've seen this before on other electronics, and a dildo...

 

Yeah, thanks for sorting that for me

 

Good advice. I have removed all the fixed aerial leads and controllers from all my old consoles and have used archival polythene bags and acid free paper (wrap around the cables so the cables are not touching) to store them in.

Keep soft plastics away from hard plastics if you are going to store things for a long time. The phthalates in PVC plastics (normally cables) can leech over time and damage ABS and other plastics, it is not a quick process so if the cables are moved a lot then you may not see anything.

Also remove controllers and leads from any polystyrene foam boxes as the cables will leech into it and cause similar damage. If you must store the cables in teh box then put them in HDPE or archival polythene bags.

 

I wonder how much sealed, new in box stuff would be fit for the trash if opened today. Probably a scary amount for collectors.

 

It's hard to say - but most consumer electronics packaging was never designed for long-term storage, so I suspect a lot of that stuff is trash now.

 

I saw this effect on a TurboGrafx Turbo Booster. I just assumed somebody had put something hot on it (or put the booster on something hot).

 

I bought a US Saturn Keyboard brand new a few years ago and it too had melted plastic. Never understood it. Now I see that it has gotten much worse since, so thank for the heads up! The cable had also made a few marks on my Dreamcast Keyboard which was on top of it. Luckily both are on the bottom side primarily.

Never seen this on anything but this Keyboard. Could it happen to the normal controllers too?

 

Yike's, I should probably fix that on my twinfami.

 

I should probably just replace the PS/2 cable on the Saturn Keyboard. I don't see the connection between this and other US Saturn peripherals necessarily, as this is just a stock PC keyboard with a SEGA logo painted on