Fixing Yellow cases & Gameboy refurbish

I'm sure this has been covered before but I did a search and couldn't find anything, so thought i'd share just in case someone new like me hadn't heard of this yet. Using salon care 40 creme on yellowed game consoles works amazingly well!

Asked my children to look for any old game stuff for me and my daughter found an old original Gameboy in a box of crap and it was ROUGH. Filthy, filled with gunk, missing the screen protector, not working etc....and yellowed, especially the front. After I took it all apart and cleaned everything up I brushed some of the aforementioned salon creme a friend of mine let me borrow on the case, then I placed the case in a pyrex dish with tin foil in the bottom, put some cellophane over the top and placed it outside in the sun for about 6 hours. Came back and that sucker looked brand new! Man I wish I'd taken a before picture.

another bonus was it didn't work before but somehow after I took it all apart and cleaned everything, it works just fine now. A nice free edition to my collection.

 

Wow, that does look pretty nice, and it didn't ruin the letters on it either.

 

Nice result. Not surprising though. It's 12% hydrogen peroxide, the same as recommended for the retrobright mix.

 

Will it also work on consoles with different colors?
Like the blue DMG Game boy? Would that also fix the colors, or is it only for the grey ones?

 

Time will tell how effective it really is though..

 

No it doesn't really, I tried on a purple GBC and it went all pale and cloudy looking

 

So the housing was ruined?

 

My buddy did an NES about 6 months ago and he says it still looks the same, so i'm hoping for the same results.

 

sadly yes

It depends what made it go yellow, contamination (ie dirt) or oxidation causing the bormine to turn the console yellow

 

What will the difference be when "fixed" with retrobright?

 

I've retrobrited a few things that have slowly re-yellowed over time... My U.S SNES still seems to be the same, but I sprayed it with sealant after I was finished. On the other hand, a PC engine I did re-yellowed despite also being sprayed with sealant.

 

did you use gloss or matte sealer?

 

After reading around about it, It seams some yellowing comes from UV rays unto the plastic which is why a sealer may not work. But I highly doubt you had your PC-Engine exposed to sunlight. Interesting....

 

I'm no expert, but couldn't it be because of oxidation?

Edit:
This is interesting reading: http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2013-01-15-retr0bright-only-temporary.htm

Edit:
This is quoted from the now closed, Retrobright wiki site:

"The central fact here IMO is that light travels much deeper into the ABS than the air's O2 or the Retr0bright solution can. So the Bromine free radicals are created up to relatively deep in the ABS, and they are small enough to travel to the surface over time. Only in the thin surface layer thats in contact with air can they react with O2 to become essentially some sort of brown dye (2BR.O).

Retr0brite can exchange the O in the Br.O for H on the surface, which essentially "bleaches" the brown dye that has already formed. But it can't go deeper than the air could, and it can't do anything to the Br radicals that were built up deeper in the plastic over 20 years. These are still there (I'm aware that this is a simplified model, in fact they probably somehow react with the ABS or other stuff that's in there) and part of them continues to travel to the surface and continues to form new brown dye just by contact with the air. It doesn't need any UV light for this to happen any more at that point."

 

Semi-gloss as I recall.

 

To me the best part of this story is that you send your kids on scavenging errands
+1