exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

stephen_usher wrote: 20 Jul 2024 06:45 As someone once said, “Managers rise to the level of their incompetence”

Yes, and that's what is tragic...

Remember, dear friends, if you wish to shoot yourself in the foot do it properly...

Use a telescopic sight and 40 calibre, armour piercing, explosive ammunition.

Do not do things by half.

Some good news... The sale of my Dad's house is starting to get moving and may be in its last three weeks.

Of course, it's likely to potentially clash with the one weekend where I have a fixed event this whole Summer.

stephen_usher wrote: 26 Jul 2024 18:21 Some good news... The sale of my Dad's house is starting to get moving and may be in its last three weeks.

Of course, it's likely to potentially clash with the one weekend where I have a fixed event this whole Summer.

I'll keep my fingers crossed it all goes through as planned, I know the nightmare of this situation well.

Thanks.

Once I know a date I can take a week off work and get the house clearance company in etc.

Preparing to retrobright the Mega 2 ST tomorrow. Really the first opportunity I've had this year.

As I had to dismantle the machine I decided to recap the low voltage side of the power supply as I have all the caps necessary.

Testing all the old caps they were all good. Perfectly within spec, low ESR and low V loss. I'm still not going to use them again though.

Anyway, all ready for nice weather tomorrow hopefully.

Retrobrighting day.

Unfortunately it's come out blotchy along the flow lines in the plastic. None of the lines corresponded with the wrinkles in the cling film.



Amazingly the clock kept the time since I took the batteries out yesterday afternoon, just stopping the clock.

I have found varying results with retrobrighting. The worst case was at about 30 degrees direct in the sun. I could see the colour changing by the second. It was very blotchy. I think the main problem is that the cream dried out very quickly.
The results have been the best for me when it is much cooler, about 20 degrees and leaving it longer, checking that the cream doesn't dry.

The cream was most definitely not dry, and I was redistributing and rubbing the cling film every 10 minutes or so over the 5 hour period.

As for the temperature, the reaction doesn’t really start until the surface gets to around 50C as that’s the activation energy of the reaction. From experiments (by others) the optimum temperature is ~60C.

The issue on this case is that a lot of the plastic hasn’t reacted at all but other parts have.

This seems to be something I’ve found common on Atari cases but I’ve had no issue with other manufacturer’s plastics.