Digital AlphaStation 250 4/266 — Part 6

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Retrobright

Something that happens with old plastics, like the ones used in old computers, is that they turn dark yellow with age. I have to say my AlphaStation has not suffered much of that, thanks for not being exposed much to UV light.

Still, I can see it’s yellower than it was originally, so I wanted to give a try to retrobright, technique that allow to recover some of the original color.

You can read about the original retrobright story and formula, but I went for the easy solution: cream for hair coloring. Cheap and easy to procure in beauty shops/supermarket. The formula is quite close to retrobright, it’s 12 % hydrogen peroxide, in cream form factor. Apply it with a brush (use gloves), wrap in transparent plastic, and expose to UV light… Also using an easy to find UV source: sunlight.

In my case, the difference is not very visible, but can be seen at the top, which I didn’t expose as well to the sunlight, so it hasn’t brightened has much as the rest of the front panel.

But it’s cool to know that works.

Airflow

One last think I thought about doing, but won’t do, is drill/cut the case metal grill in front of the intake fan in order to reduce turbulences and noise. The idea is to have only the plastic front panel. But this brings 2 issues:

The EMI issue, loss of shielding provided by the metal case, can be solved by attaching a metal mesh… but brings back the noise depending on how the mesh is, so to be chosen carefully. It can also serve has a filter, otherwise add a thin dust filter/foam in the plastic front panel.

Also cutting the case would require a lot of work, removing all the components or protecting them from metal shards that would come in the cutting process. All that for probably not much gain. Especially for a machine I’m probably not going to use much.

I think I will stop here with my modification of the AlphaStation. I will keep that last task for my old days 😉.

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