Yellow A4000 front

[NoFastMem]

I've seen computer plastics yellow in dark storage too. It's weird but it happens.

[Gav]

Yeah my brother had his 500+ in a dust cover since he bought it new in the 90s..Then it was in dark storage for a long time and now parts of it are yellow,same thing happend to my friends dreamcast.

[KThunder]

oxidation?

[patrik]

@Gav:

It didn't happen to be very hot in the storage during periods of the years, like the summer?

Heat speeds up chemical processes.


/Patrik

[amiga1084]

Hello All,

You guys are going to think I am an idiot for doing this when you read my story.You can only learn from your mistakes.

I had spare mint white 030 A4000 panel,I had no use for it as my spare A4000 is also mint white which is also 030 but has Warp Engine put in.So I had no use for it so during rubbish collection day I just trow this panel away with other rubbish (no other Amiga gear) and didn't think much about it.Several years ago I use to sell(they were all white) A4000 on Ebay for several reasons but mostly to make quick cash.(I wouldn't do it today A4000 are getting quite rare now.)Anyway month later I was given my first yellowed A4000 for nothing.It was one of first A4000's 040 with A2000 size disk drive which is still white and Buster 9 least it was socketed (so I can change it if I can find one) and it had Picasso 4 GFX card GVP Scsi card.Anyway back to the white panel I trow away,I was kicking myself as I keep this yellow A4000 on top of my mint white spare A4000 desktop as I have no room put it anywhere else and I keep the A4000's on top of my computer desk it looks horrible together.(My main Amiga is 4000T is under my computer desk) It's getting to stage where I want to get panal preferentially painted white I have seen some good jobs on Ebay.

I could be wrong but from my experance early A4000 (1992) panal's were more prone to getting yellowed than the later versions with the 030 slimline disk drives A4000 version's came out in mid 1993 to early 1994 But I could be wrong.Like to hear your comments.Merv :-?

[Hyperspeed]

My A1200 desktop has stayed vanilla white for 12yrs now and hasn't yellowed anywhere. The key transfers don't like ionic surfactant like Cif or Flash so don't use kitchen detergents or anything.

I found Simple shower gel, warm water and an electric toothbrush are a great combination.

Anything with smoke yellowing can be left to soak and with a rough dish pad can be scrubbed up to white.

Chemical yellowing from heat, age or sunlight won't budge. Scratching off the surface probably isn't a good idea.

I've seen some injection moulded plastics sweatting. Like an old Epson Stylus printer, the plastic under the hood had a leaf-like pattern of haze on it that could be wiped off - as if it comes out of the plastic. Scientists have also suggested that plastic food packaging might leak chemicals into food (some that mimic oestrogen hormones). In fact, there was a scare about 10yrs ago with 'cling-film' for wrapping sandwiches in!

I have an old yellowy case and I just bought a matt-cream spray from a hardware store.

[thewalrus]

I have several 4000 desktops in which I have had a number of the front panels along with other bits and pieces professionally sprayed with a special paint that sticks to acrylic.  The machine come up like new amd it is impossible to tell they have been resprayed. I also have a mint old 2000 in which I fitted a Cream CD drive. I got that resprayed the same tan colour of the 2000 and it looks really good. Other items I have applied the same treatment too are yellowed drive bay surrounds, floppy drive fronts, amiga keyboard surrounds etc etc The transformation is fantastic! I am not sure what the paint is but I could make inquiries if you are interested. I certainly would not sand the panels. The only hassle is you have to disassemble everything but it is worth it. I am just about to apply the same treatment to a 3000 and 1200 case surround. The fact is I Hate yellowed and mismatched amigas!!!

[Hyperspeed]

It's a nightmare getting matching beige peripherals these days too... everything is silver, black or brilliant white!

If you intend spraying stuff and want to do some intricate masking to avoid spraying over things like key transfers then I reccommend masking paint. You dab it on like PVA glue and use a hairdryer to set it, then when you've done your spraying it peels off like latex.

For straight lines there's the basic, low-tack masking tape available in most art shops.

A touchup I performed lately using silver enamel was to paint the edges of my A1200's LEDs so that the light doesn't leak into the surrounding LEDs and case. What I mean is that the bright green POWER LED doesn't cause a slight glow to emant from the F.DISK LED (the lights are square and not insulated). Makes things look crisper, especially if you are using the lights to display CPU use via Executive, are keeping an eye on the audio filter or are just paranoid about a guru!

:-D

[coldfish]

Ive found vinyl (auto apholstery) spray paint sticks to ABS very well, it kinda vulcanizes into the surface 1/2 a mm or so, it wont chip off later like enamel will.

There was a guy around here recently that did a black/charcoal A600 mod and added new key decals...?

[Hyperspeed]

That sounds like leirbag28, he has a rather swish A600 and CD32.

I'm just wondering if it's an airborne pollutant that changes the colour of plastic, maybe carbon dioxide?

Strange that a Dreamcast was mentioned as going yellow as surely by 1999 all plastics would have had LV mixed in to protect against yellowing.

It's possible that contact with others plastics could trigger a yellowing. I know when I bought a second hand A1200 it came with a PVC/Vinyl dustcover and that seemed to have yellowed the case!

[Mugo]

coldfish wrote:
Ive found vinyl (auto apholstery) spray paint sticks to ABS very well, it kinda vulcanizes into the surface 1/2 a mm or so, it wont chip off later like enamel will.

There was a guy around here recently that did a black/charcoal A600 mod and added new key decals...?

I did something like that in my A1200.

Did lots of mods in there, and painted it all black. Even the keyboard. After that i applied some inkjet water decals.

I was hoping it looked like crap, but the final results really pleased me, even more because i did it with no proper tools, and it took me weeks o hard work, just to mention the keyboard work.

You can see some (bad) pictures of it in the link bellow. These are the pages for the little meeting we have here in Brazil:

http://www.amilive.hpg.ig.com.br/amiliverj3/index.html

Just for the record, i'm the guy in the red shirt, in the second group of pictures, first line, last picture, that's carrying lots of beer cans in his chest :lol:

These are quite old photos (about one year old), and the machine now have a different configuration (Elbox FastATA MKII, BPPC with BVision, own made monitor switcher for the scandoubler/BVision, some fans).

In the moment it's disassembled, so i can touch up somethings, but i'm really proud of this baby :-D

By the way, the decals i've used are called SuperCal, and can be acquired from this website:

http://www.supercaldecals.com/

If you, like me, is in a country that doesn't have a local dealer for this product, they will not send you the sealing spray. But you can do as i did, and buy only the refil sheets. I used nail varnish to seal the printing, before putting it in the water. Worked like a charm.

[tomswift]

Quote:
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By the way, the decals i've used are called SuperCal, and can be acquired from this website:

http://www.supercaldecals.com/

If you, like me, is in a country that doesn't have a local dealer for this product, they will not send you the sealing spray. But you can do as i did, and buy only the refil sheets. I used nail varnish to seal the printing, before putting it in the water. Worked like a charm.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Just did a google and found this:

http://www.sightconnection.com/laprkest.html

These stickers for the keyboard look like they would work.  I've had an A3000 and an A4000 yellow.  I went the paint route and if your careful with the color match it's hard to tell which is painted.

[Mugo]

tomswift wrote:
Quote:

Just did a google and found this:

http://www.sightconnection.com/laprkest.html

These stickers for the keyboard look like they would work.  I've had an A3000 and an A4000 yellow.  I went the paint route and if your careful with the color match it's hard to tell which is painted.

The problem i see with these stickers, is that they are for sight deficit people. They are huge !

Note that some of the stickers even don't have all the caracters (Escape for example - Just ES).

I think that it could be a really pain saver if they were a little prettier . . .

[aardvark]

Well there are these guys.

These guys.

And these guys, these guys, and these guys, as well as numerous others (google keyboard stickers)
  I've seen these at Comdex, some companies have peel and stick labels, some have key caps that snap on to existing keys, and some replace the original key itself.  of course, to order one full set of Amiga keys would be expensive, but if someone could conglomerate an order, the price might be reasonable.  (Any entrepreneural types out there, I smell a business opportunity?)

[Hyperspeed]

Wonder if you could order an euro-symbol sticker and use the official Amiga patch, then someone utilise one of the blank keys on a UK keyboard for the euro symbol.

[Doppie1200]

I've been examining my uber yellow keyboards I have here. It seems to me the plastic directly under the keyboard decal is not that yellow. And also the parts of white/yellow coming from underneath the decal (like the center of the '0') are not a really significant part of the keyboard button.

So I thought, if you have enough free time you could put a  
Liquid mask on the button. After your white spray paint has dried you just clean the button and it should be OK I guess.