Any interest in a restoration service?

[User4703]

I spruce up old consoles in my spare time for friend and associates, you know the usual stuff of opening them up to clean out the years of crud and then bleaching the plastics, putting it back together and hanging a Magic Tree around the rear view mirror.

Sort of like a valet for your hardware. Now recently I was having a conversation with a chap who stated that I should turn this into a business as there are "loads of retroheads that shudder at the thought of taking a Philips head to their pride and joy" plus I do a great job.

What do you lot reckon? Would you pay for something like this as I was under the impression that most folks of a certain vintage are all have a go heroes and, after all, that's what Sundays were made for.

 

[liam1101]

Hi

would this be a full recap and rgb mod service?

regards

 

[Justin]

I would be surprised if there was much call for this, most of the excellent people i know are more than happy to do this themselves, it is only when it gets down to delicate/fine soldering jobs that people seem to get twitchy

just my thoghts btw

 

[sputnik]

You see cleaned / tested / recapped machines fetch a lot more than the murky car boot specials over at T'Other bay.

It might not appeal to the more hands-on enthusiasts but I'd say overall there are definitely people who want their machines in top-top physical and functional shape.

Only one way to find out

 

[User4703]

I thought exactly the same thing, after all most of the boards in these older machines are so easy to play with (not like the mare it used to be adding extra RAM to an Xbox) that you could get away with a soldering iron the size of a BIC pen.

eBay I wouldn't touch with a barge pole and seeing as this is a specialized service aimed at a niche thats why I thought I'd ask here. Back to Sunday afternoon favours for beer tokens...

 

[Aysel]

To be honest its a bit like buying a car at auction, I would rather buy the dirty tatty motor where I can see what's wrong and has nothing to hide and then sort it out myself rather than pay a premium for the tarted up car that looks nice on the surface but is full of hidden horrors lol.

Basically what I'm trying to say is if you see an A4k covered in tyre paint and smelling of tcut.... walk away ��

 

[demolition]

I think almost nobody would want to pay anywhere near a reasonable price for having their old hardware restored except for the usual dust removal and recapping which doesn't take too long. From my retrobrighting sessions I know that you can spend many hours on a relatively small piece. The price difference between your normal used piece and a (real) mint one is not that big tbh., at least for relatively common stuff. It might be better for rare stuff like certain arcade cabinets.

I do think that it should be possible to build a retrobrighting machine which would make it a lot easier to do without manual work. Think a big sealed UV transparent box with a few nozzles in the top/sides, connected to tubes with H2O2 which constantly sprays over the item(s) inside. The H2O2 will be collected from the bottom and pumped back to the tubes. The bottom should be reflecting and the entire thing could rotate or at least swivel slowly from side to side to even out the sunlight exposure. The hard part here would be to get a pump and nozzles which can withstand the H2O2 (a pump made of plastic?).

 

[Monkeh]

Standard aquarium pumps should be fine - you can even get pipes rated to be used with ozone so peroxide shouldn't wreck it.