"Systemic Stupidity" How seemingly good information can be used badly when it comes to vintage computing methods on Youtube.

[Chuck(G)]

Vintage computing, whatever that means, like anything else waxes and wanes depending on the age of the community. I've simply given away lots of vintage stuff if someone would pay for shipping or come and get it. I have to laugh when I see people drooling over VIC-20s and Apple IIs--you could have pallet-loads of them back in the day if you offered to haul them away. I remember one of the local surplus stores here had a gaylord full of VIC20s and a sign: "Take as many as you can carry for $5". Local schools dumped Apple IIs by the truckload when they changed them out for PCs or Macs. I recall asking about a pile of FH Tandon hard drives that I saw at one of the surplus traders and asking about them. "You can have one, so long as you take the whole pile."

So it's not a matter of how much, but when.

 

[soviet9922]

Another great method is covering stuff in fuel and setting it on fire for a few hours, this usually removes all dirt.
xD

 

[hard_fault]

Have certainly found some of the content regarding retrobrite to be pretty dubious... Only attempted it once on a very, very, yellow Macintosh SE.. about 5 or 6 years ago. I remember just trying to absorb as much information as I could from as many sources as I could find, and I did what I thought made sense.

The biggest pet peeve of mine, with regards to YouTubers, is lack of ESD mitigation. This has probably been beaten to death on this forum, but I have this experience to share regarding that topic...
The small company I started working for in 2015 handled PCBs and other electronics without any ESD mitigation. Wooden workbenches with no ESD mats, no floor mat, no wrist strap... Nothing.
I remember we had a high PCB fallout rate, stacks of bad PCBs in several boxes every year.
Thankfully, my frequent complaints about this were indeed heard, and action was taken to completely transform the production floor with a focus on ESD protection. Everyone got nice ESD workbenches with all of the other ESD mitigation components. New policies dictated we couldn't just open up an instrument and work on it anywhere, it had to be done at a certified ESD bench.

At the end of the first year with the ESD benches, I had to point out the PCB scrap area. There were just 2 scrap boards for the whole year. What a difference proper ESD mitigation makes!

Therefore, when working on these old electronics, I will not touch bare PCBs without a wrist strap connected to a proper ground, unlike what is being done on so many YouTube videos.