Restoring classic kits we built way-back-when

We've had the ongoing debate of "build a ZX-81 kit or leave it in the box", but one aspect of classic kit building I have a question for the group about is, what about stuff that we built ourselves 10+ years ago that still works, but might need some touch-up. Specifically, I have several things (a TVT-6, a Cosmac Elf, a homemade arcade button panel for playing Space Invaders on a PET, a 2-char LED display for the PET, etc.) that I made when I was a teenager. They still work, so it's not a question of repair. It's an aesthetic thing - my soldering skills were much poorer when I was 13. I'm debating re-soldering these items (and risking breaking them) or leaving them the way they are a) because if it works, don't screw with it, and b) it's a snapshot of my own context in the greater historical framework. I took history and archaeology in school; I have a strong aversion to modernizing artifacts. When restoring pots, statues, mosaics, etc., an archaeologist tries to never restore an antiquity in a way that can't be reversed (they use water-soluable glue made from fish scales to move mosaic fragments, for example). Also, when modern materials are used, no attempt to make it resemble the ancient material is made - quite the opposite - it's plainly and intentionally modern looking so ever a casual observer can't mistake it for the missing original. When my advisor restored the bed of a large monochrome mosaic near Isthmia, he threw several modern coins into the concrete bed so that future excavators would know that it wasn't ancient concrete. So re-soldering my TVT-6 makes it look nice, but dilutes the fact that it was originally built in the 1970s, just as much as using modern ICs does. Do people have an opinion about this? Am I just stuck on the horns of a false dilemma? -ethan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? NEW from Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1