22 Dec
1997
22 Dec
'97
2:35 p.m.
At 09:04 AM 12/22/97 -0800, you wrote:
At 09:22 12/22/97, you wrote:
Does applying Armor-All or any of the other plastic preservatives
prevent the hardening? I've never tried it on the hard palstics, only vinyl.
Joe
I have several old HP computers that have done the
same thing. Is there
any way to repair or restore the color?
No, there (currently) isn't. And the real bother isn't the discoloration,
but the accompanying embrittlement -- I picked up a mustard-colored HP
terminal once and had a piece of the case break off in my hand.
A bloke who was researching this at the Science Mus. in London wrote an
article for the ANALYTICAL ENGINE in which he basically said that there was
no reversing the effect, and the only way you could limit the deterioration
was to keep the artifact in near-total darkness. I also asked the
Smithsonian and they concurred with this.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California