Retro Gaming Garage

Hi everyone,

I have a collection of video game consoles, both current and retro, and of course games to go with them. Sadly my retro gaming is done in my spare room on a small CRT TV as that is all we have space for in there. I'd really like to get a nice big CRT. Now my wife has agreed to let me use the garage as a man cave where all my stuff could live, and this means I could fit a nice big CRT in there.

However the garage is a garage - it's not warm, it's not insulated. I'm worried that if I keep a TV and consoles in there, they will get damaged. I live in the UK and the garage is attached to the house, so while the temperature outside may occasionally reach freezing point, the temperature in the garage should stay above freezing.

I've been looking for existing advice on forums and people say that cold isn't an issue as long as you let equipment warm up to room temperature before using it. That's all very good, but I want to use the equipment in the garage rather than bringing it into the warmer areas of the house.

I have kept other stuff in the garage all year round without any problems with damp or anything. I'm planning on keeping games inside plastic boxes when not in use, probably with silicone sachets just to be safe, but it's the TV and whichever console I have attached to it at any given time that I'm worried about. Will they get damaged when the chips warm up or when the TV tube warms up?

Has anyone got any experience with this?

Thanks in advance!

 

A few years ago I lived in a place where the garage had been setup as a play/games room, but since it wasn't attached to the house and couldn't share the heating/AC it got incredibly cold in winter and incredibly hot in summer. I kept my PS1, PS2, and an original xbox out there with an old CRT for about 2 years and I really would not recommend it. The PS1 died pretty quickly in summer, possibly due to humidity, and the PS2's drive motor began to move slowly until the point where it basically died and you had to pull the tray out manually as soon as the mechanism allowed for it, but the xbox and CRT were both fine.

Would it be possible for you to carpet the garage floor? Doing that would at least help to insulate the room a bit.

 

Carpeting the floor would be a possibility. I don't think the garage gets damp at all. I do a lot of drawing and I keep drawers of paper in there, and they're all as good as the day I bought them. I just worry about cold electrical components warming up during use and potentially getting damaged. Long term, we plan to convert the garage to a proper room, which will obviously solve all my problems, but that's not going to be for a few years.

 

Then I'd say carpet the floor and put an adequate heater in there, maybe one or two of those little gas type ones. I'm not sure exactly what winter is like in the UK, but here in Japan it gets very dry. To stop things from potentially cracking (like the plastic of your consoles) you might want to get a humidifier.

 

In the UK there are no extremes of anything weather-wise. I'm not the air gets dry enough to crack anything.

Thanks for the thoughts guys, it's helpful to hear your opinions

 

Lucky you! I fear for the wood on my cocktail arcade machines every year...

No problem, wish I could be of more help though.

 

i was at a school (with a councler once) we had a garage/modifyed room for games. we use to play crazy taxie all the time