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polystyrene

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BobA:
Thanks for the info.  It may help save some old consoles.

ChadTower:

Well it's not like it destroys anything.  All you have to do is wrap the funky part of the cord.  I've never seen one that was so bad the object was destroyed.  It's more like you grab the wire and there is a segment where the insulation is slimy and soft for no obvious reason.

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: ChadTower on January 24, 2011, 11:16:36 am ---
As a long time console collector I have seen that on cords a million times.  I always chalked it up to aging rubber but never knew what caused it or why I saw it so often on some things (RF cords) but not on others (controllers).  Very interesting.

--- End quote ---

In an archive where I worked, cracked rubber anything was ridiculously common. There's two things that occur. Either the "rubber" turns brittle and disentigrates or it turns to goo. No one in that field understands the how or why for 99% of the stuff.

I think this won't be the cause of that cord that's been sitting on a wood basement shelf for the past 50 years but I finally know why the Hell my styrene based stuff keeps melting and the PVC based stuff keeps turning to dust.

It may be prudent to double check the shells too. I recalled an article about the yellowing of plastics on the console so I re-read the article http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/189 and found what I suspected. That a type of styrene was used in the cases of electronics. Not all consoles (if any) used styrene shells. SNES used ABS as per the article. Still, it wouldn't hurt to catalogue the consoles and avoid the problems.

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: ChadTower on January 24, 2011, 03:10:00 pm ---
Well it's not like it destroys anything.  All you have to do is wrap the funky part of the cord.  I've never seen one that was so bad the object was destroyed.  It's more like you grab the wire and there is a segment where the insulation is slimy and soft for no obvious reason.

--- End quote ---

Are we talking about the same thing? Ive seen the goo symptom but never on electrical wires.

The cord, mine at least, isn't actually gooey. Once i removed the hard white polystyrene, the underlying layer was flaky and crispy. More akin to a bad heat damage.

On the PSU cord, the melted styrene is even harder like a shellac.

ChadTower:
I'm talking about game console cords.  It's not unusual to find old ones that have been stored in the styrofoam and have soft and slightly gooey spots on them.  I had never really put the cause and effect together before.  I always wiped the goo off with a paper towel and you can see where the cord insulation is thinner in those spots.  In really bad cases it exposes the inner wires.

After having had a day to think about it I seem to remember seeing it most often with Odyssey 2 and Ti99 cords.  When I found those systems they were usually stored in the beaten up box, with styrofoam, but no bags.  Just like you described.  Most of them had probably been that way for 25-30 years, too.

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