How do you maintain retro and other older electronics? What can go wrong?

Today, we'll look at some of your questions about the risks and best ways to keep our old electronics working.

This week, we also have the sad duty of saying goodbye to 2 legendary performers, Dolly Parton and Tim Curry.

William Sikkens, Bill Snodgrass, Gretchen Winkler

Welcome to

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User Friendly 2.0 with host Bill Sikkens.

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Technology architect.

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And this is User Friendly 2.0!

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I am your host Bill Sikkens.

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Joining me Bill, Gretchen.

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Welcome to this week's show. Hello there.

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So we've got to start out

with some sad news.

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I'm afraid today because we've lost

two of the greats and entertainment.

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And both passed away at the age of 80.

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First one is the legendary Dolly Parton.

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Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80.

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She died Tuesday in Nashville,

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following what her representatives

described as a brief battle with cancer.

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Born in rural Tennessee in 1946, Dolly

Parton rose from a childhood of poverty

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in the Smoky Mountains

to become one of the most

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recognizable entertainers in the world.

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And while we think of her as a

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country music legend, country star

really just doesn't begin to cover it.

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She wrote classics including Jolene,

Code of Many Colors, 9 to 5,

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and I Will Always Love You.

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She became a successful actress,

appearing in films including 9 to 5,

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The Best Little Whorehouse

in Texas, and Steel.

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She was

also a remarkably successful business

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woman whose name became synonymous

with Dollywood.

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But one of Dolly Parton's

greatest legacies

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may have happened away from the stage.

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Her Imagination Library has provided books

to millions of children,

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and she quietly put enormous amounts

of her wealth and influence behind

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literacy, education, disaster

relief, and medical research.

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Dolly also possessed a rare ability

in modern American culture.

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People from widely different backgrounds

seem to agree that they liked her.

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She could poke fun at herself,

never seemed embarrassed

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by where she came from, and built

an extraordinarily career

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largely

by being unmistakably Dolly Parton.

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And sadly, we've also learned today

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of the death of Tim Curry,

also at the age of 80.

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For generations of movie

fans, Curry will be forever.

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Doctor Frankfurter and The Rocky

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Horror Picture Show one of the great cult

film performances of all time.

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But Tim Curry has one of those careers

where almost everybody remembers him

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for something different.

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Maybe he's Wadsworth and Clue.

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Maybe he's the terrifying

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television adaptation of Stephen

King's It.

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Maybe you remember him from legend,

The Three Musketeers or Home Alone two,

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and an entire younger generation knew him

unmistakably voiced through animation,

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particularly in Nigel Thornberry

in The Wild Thornberrys.

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And yeah, he was a voice actor.

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A very good one, too. Agreed.

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Corey was a Curry.

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Rather was also an accomplished

stage performer, earning the three

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Tony Award nominations,

including recognition for Amadeus,

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My Favorite Year and Spamalot.

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His career changed dramatically

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which affected his mobility

and left him using a wheelchair,

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but he continued working,

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making appearances and maintaining

a wonderfully warm relationship

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with the fans who had followed him

or his work over the decades.

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There's

something particularly striking about

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losing Dolly Parton and Tim Curry

so close together.

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One gave us Jolene,

the other gave us Frankfurter

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and Pennywise, and somehow

both became fixtures of popular culture,

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whose work Cross generations

Dolly Parton and Tim Curry both gone at 80

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and both leaving behind the kind of work

that isn't going anywhere.

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And they are two

legends that will be missed.

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All right.

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What do we have in the news?

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Oh, well, Dish Network is in bankruptcy,

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so this is actually not a new topic.

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This has happened back in June

when this was officially filed.

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But we've had a lot of questions

coming in about this, wanting to know

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what is actually going on here,

because there's a lot of different

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stories, let's just say,

that are floating out out there.

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And one of them is, is Dish Network

going to stop broadcasting and a company

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that they own called sling,

which you may have heard of, sling

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TV is obviously a very well known

over the top

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provider of television

channels and other content.

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So what's actually happened here

is they filed chapter 11 bankruptcy,

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and that's the kind of bankruptcy

that is restructuring.

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It doesn't mean they're suddenly shutting

down and locking their doors there

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with creditors and some

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other things that are required

to try to get their company back on track.

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So yeah, it does mean

that sling TV is bankrupt too,

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because they're part of the filings,

but neither is shutting down.

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What the problem really here is, is that

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people aren't using linear television

like they used to.

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So Dish Network is, of course

a competitor for cable television.

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Satellite

based has been around for a long time.

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And at the end of the day,

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just with churn and cord cutting

and everything else,

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they are starting to have problems

and need to restructure.

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So I don't see them shutting down.

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I don't think

we're going in that direction.

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Certainly not sling TV,

but we are seeing in the general

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overall linear television things

that a lot of channels are shutting down.

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More and more people

are using on demand services.

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You know, the idea in 2026

of having to wait for a certain time

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for a show to air is

just not something we're used to anymore.

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You know,

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you watch what you want on demand

and that type of a thing. So

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but just to give an idea of where

this is going

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at the end of June,

which is when they filed this TV

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had 4.684 million subscribers,

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1.7 million sling TV subscribers.

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So it's a total of 6.391 million combined.

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And in the second quarter,

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they lost 161,000 subscribers,

while sling lost about 80,000.

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Now it's a little unusual for sling

because people are still going with that.

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I think they'll be able to turn that one

around.

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But again,

linear television is something that's

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definitely from the last decade,

if not before.

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So it's going to be interesting

to see, you know, how

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they end up doing with this

and what should go on before the moment.

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If you have dish TV, you are not at risk

of losing your channels.

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The one little thing that I have noticed

across the board on

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this is blackouts of channels,

especially local channels.

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They seem to be a lot less interested

in renegotiating some of this stuff

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at this point,

I think probably because of the money.

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And so, you know, we could start

to see some stuff like that.

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All right.

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Robots can outrun humans,

but can they plug in a cable?

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That's a very good question.

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It's a strange question, but the strange

question and there's this competition.

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So Reuters is reporting this.

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Reuters. Reuters.

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Anyway, it's one of those two ways

anyway.

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But Reuters.

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Reuters

I knew I was saying it wrong Reuters.

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So they have these competition

and these have been going on for a while.

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The latest one was held August 23rd

in Beijing, where humanoid robots

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are put in competition

with each other over things.

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They have proven that they can run quicker

than the fastest humans.

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The fine motor control and that type of

thing is getting a lot better.

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But one of the next things coming up

is the ability to compete in more.

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What you would find in the office stuff.

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Can they plug in a network cable,

as the headline says?

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Can they do some of these different type

of things now?

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About a year ago, a competition

like this was held and it didn't go well,

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but it seemed like it was more

the AI is running.

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The robots got bored

and just decided not to do it.

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So we'll see what

happens this time around.

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All right.

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Yeah, I think I'd get bored of doing

the same task over and over.

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Looks like broadcaster

is fighting to retrieve

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70 years of footage

after its storage provider disappeared.

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Tell us about that.

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So this is in reference to PBS and what?

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This is where these things

become important to have backups.

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This been like a major thing of it,

but it's the same idea.

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Okay.

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So you have your memory card from your,

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you know, camera back when we had those

are your phone now these type of things

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and something gets stolen lost damage

that kind of a thing.

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You would be out those photos or whatever

the case may be.

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Modern equipment

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like your phone providers, usually back up

to the cloud automatically.

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And for the bigger companies

like PBS and other broadcasters,

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they use cloud based services

as well for archival

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and running different things

that are in aspect of being a broadcaster.

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And what's happened here is it

would be kind of like

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if you had everything

backed up on your phone or other device,

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and the company

that was doing the backups for you

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suddenly went away and you couldn't

get access to your your information

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anymore

at all times, at times a little bit.

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And you have 70 years of footage

that seem to have disappeared

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and that they can no longer

get access to at EBS.

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And that's what's going on here.

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It's a problem.

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It's about 50TB of footage.

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Again, a 70 year archive

includes things like their coverage

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of the Great Flood of 1993, the Covid 19

pandemic, irreplaceable stuff, and so on.

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So, you know, it's

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one of those things that they have to

be careful.

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I am working with a client right now

where we're trying to figure

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out or not trying to figure out,

but we put into place a backup situation.

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Well, it's not 70 years of stuff.

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It would cost them their business

to something like this happen.

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So we have both their online

normal cloud backups,

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the online cloud system

that runs their things.

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We are also putting into place

a storage array

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that they have control over

that automatically

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back up once a month from the stuff

that's out on the main system.

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It's a little bit of money to do that,

but it saves the data.

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And then they're going to another step

where

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once a month they rotate in basically

an offline hard drive,

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which backs that up, and then it's

physically disconnected from the network.

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Because remember,

if you're losing your data

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because the hackers got

in, they know you have backups

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and they know they're online,

that's not going to do you a lot of good.

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You need the offline backups too.

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But you still want cloud backups

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because if your office burns down

or there's a catastrophic problem.

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Bill in Reno,

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I know you guys have just been dealing

with that with the fire right now.

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These things happen

and can be completely unexpected.

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Then you want the cloud backup,

so it's just the best way of covering it.

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These in space.

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Yeah.

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And I was thinking trying to remember why

this would make me think of the Muppets.

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And then I was like a pigs in space.

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So over the years,

NASA has been putting up different animals

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to see how they react to things, bees

being no exception to this.

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And it's actually worked out quite well.

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They've been able to build their hive

and do all the different things

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they would on Earth.

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And you know,

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some of these experiments are actually

becoming more and more important now

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because of the fact

that we are starting to talk about

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having life in space, establishing,

you know, places to live.

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Mars has been talked about.

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The moon,

I think will be more likely first,

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but at the end of the day,

we're going to need

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food, we're going to need animals

and all of these type of things.

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We need to know how they work.

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And well,

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I think it's kind of cool

about these experiments

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is it's not something where it injures

the animal either.

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It's just, you know, they do

the experiment and then bring them back.

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So yeah, but it's

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kind of interesting to see it just it

didn't seem like a bug them a whole lot.

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The colony was in a contained environment

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and they were able to go

about their normal business.

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Cool.

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Which is interesting considering Zero-G.

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Yeah, yeah, I think that's a big reason

why they wanted to conduct an experiment

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like this.

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Because again, you know,

you can do stuff in the lab

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and try to figure things out,

but you really don't know what it is.

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Some backups or some backups,

some background information of this is

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this is not the first time

insects have been sent to space.

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This experiment actually started

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But the first time they did

this was with Fruit Flies in Space

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in 1947, which were the

first animals sent to space.

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All right.

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Thinking of stuff that makes us

think about space.

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Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

is about to open.

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So thinking about space,

this would be Lucas

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of the George Lucas of Star Wars,

among other things. Yes.

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And you should see the building

they're building or they built.

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It looks like a spaceship, in my opinion.

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Kind of, you know, it's cool.

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Scheduled to open September 22nd.

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So here in a couple of weeks,

Exposition Park in Los Angeles.

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So if you're down there,

certainly worth checking out.

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I can imagine how Opening Day

is going to be.

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You guys,

we should go drive down on the 22nd.

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Want to go?

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I want to see this. Let's

see if maybe we can make that happen.

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But let's see.

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The museum is founded

by George Lucas and his wife, Melody and.

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Ariel Investments, believe is

the company that they're doing it under.

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But it's not just about space.

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No, it's about, you know, narrative art.

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You know, it's visual. It's.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So, you know, a thing like that,

I you know, what they're talking about,

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including in this is illustration,

comic books, movie concept art,

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photography, children's

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books, illustrations, posters

and other forms of visual storytelling

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and share space with paintings

and other traditional artworks.

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This sounds absolutely incredible.

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There's more than 40,000 works,

so it's a fairly large museum,

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and it's going to feature over

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So yeah, that's going to be a day or two

to see all that, I think.

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Yeah, I was about to say we'd need

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at least two days because it looks like

there's a garden of grounds

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that looks like it would be amazing

to walk through as well.

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So and, and for anybody asking,

is there going to be Star Wars here.

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Yes there is, Bill. Go ahead.

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I would say I mean, other than the fact

that it's in LA, I would

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I would do some serious things

to be a curator at that museum.

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Yeah.

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So, you know,

I mean, maybe make it worthwhile.

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Not that we're anti LA.

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There's a lot of good people in Los

Angeles, but I too big of a city for me.

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But yeah it's too stressful. Yeah.

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But again there's going to be Star Wars.

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And if there wasn't

that would be really weird.

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So they're going to be featuring props,

costumes, artwork and other materials

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from Lucasfilm's

going back more than four decades.

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And that will include material from the

first six Star Wars movies, the first four

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Indiana Jones films, plus Willow, Red

tails, Howard the Duck and others.

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And one of the initial expositions

is appropriate called Star Wars in Motion.

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Yeah, so we're going to have to find out

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more about this and see

what's going to be there.

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Among the announced pieces are the Luke

Skywalker's land speeder

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and the first physical build

of General Grievous wheel bike.

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Oh, nice.

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Our transparent solar panels.

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Real? Yeah.

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I can't remember if this was a listener

question or where this actually came from.

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Me might have been Gretchen.

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So this was a Instagram

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video, which always is like, okay,

we should probably double check that.

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There's

a lot of real material on Instagram

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and there's a lot of absolutely fake stuff

on Instagram, and it's up in the middle.

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So it's sometimes, you know,

creates a situation where it's like, okay,

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at least I can count on the gravity stuff

being real.

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This is true.

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Yeah.

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And gravity unfortunately has to try

to convince people that sometimes.

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But gravity is real.

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You know, I both flown the pack.

It's real.

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But the idea of a transparent

solar panel, yes, it is actually real.

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It's a thing that's been out for a while.

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And there's several universities

have been testing this out.

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It's something that does create power.

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The thing of it is it's a little bit

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where you don't maybe see this mainstream

yet is the fact that they produce

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less power than a standard solar panel,

because a standard solar panel is able to

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more closely contain

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the light, whereas a clear solar panel

that flows through it.

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However, some of the applications

that are being considered

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for this

or the glass on the side of skyscrapers

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or it doesn't matter really,

because whatever you have up

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there is going to produce energy

where it doesn't now.

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And even though it might be less

than a standard

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solar panel,

it's still going to be a lot of power

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and could certainly help to contribute

to the power requirements of the building.

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I've also seen a work up

where they're talking about

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using this type of technology

for a data center,

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and actually encapsulating

the whole building in a glass.

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It's kind of a cool concept

if you look at the artwork,

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because you'd walk into

what is basically a glass building.

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So it's all full of natural light

and that kind of thing.

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But all of that glass is producing

a good portion of the electricity

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that's running the data center underneath.

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So I think, I think I saw a work up

two of like a building

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like the MGM Grand in Vegas,

you know, or was it the Luxor?

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The pyramid?

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The pyramid is the Luxor, okay.

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The Luxor,

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where they were using that same technology

to because it's mostly glass, right?

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Yeah. And absolutely.

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So, you know,

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and that was the biggest negative

I could even find on it

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because I was trying to look

for both sides of this as well.

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It doesn't produce as much power

because it's transparent.

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Well, so what right now the glass

in your window probably produces no power.

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So. Yeah, exactly. You know,

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and they aren't

that much more difficult to manufacture

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and actually don't cost

that more than much more

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when you're looking at it

from the concept of like a skyscraper,

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if you were to redo your home windows with

it, it would be a little bit more money.

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But even though it's

still in the range of affordable.

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So let's say you were going to do

energy store on your home.

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So you're doing low glass replacement,

which is something

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I'm thinking about doing.

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I might actually look into this technology

and see if it'd be worth it.

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I don't know if I have enough glass

coverage to where it would be worth

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all the back end equipment,

but it'd be kind of something interesting.

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At least find out about,

hey, you can do it on my house.

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What else would you.

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The color in the wires, wouldn't it?

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Yeah. Well, you and you're going

to have installation like that.

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You have cable runs,

but you also have equipment that has to

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go somewhere that receives the power

and does something with it.

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Usually charging

a battery is the way that works.

360

Yeah. You know, so

so there's some investment in there.

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So would the amount of glass space

on a residential home

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be enough to accommodate that on its own?

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Probably not.

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What I'm thinking is, is adding it

to an existing solar

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panel installation, though,

and then conceivably using the same back

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end equipment

that's already running the solar panels

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and just adding that as an input,

then it might make it make sense to do it.

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So we'll see.

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All right.

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And here's another unusual thing.

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World's first hands free umbrella.

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Yeah again an Instagram.

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Now this is a funny one too

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because the video I saw on Instagram

is clearly AI generated.

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Okay,

I wasn't sure it looked a little off,

376

but I was thinking,

oh, that's a cool idea.

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But the engineer

and the idea of this is actually real.

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And there are some real videos of him

showing this off with what

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he actually has,

but which is one of those things too,

380

because you look at it in the first thing

is, oh, this is AI generated.

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It's fake.

382

Well,

the video was definitely AI generated,

383

but the thing is not fake.

384

There's a few things about it, though

that are going to be a little time for.

385

I think you're going to see this

at target.

386

And number one.

387

So basically what it is, is

388

it's essentially a quadcopter

with a Raspberry Pi in it.

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It's able to track the user.

390

So he walks under it

and this thing flies over his head.

391

And it's really kind of cool.

And it does work.

392

The proof of concept

is absolutely out there,

393

and I think of other ideas

that could be used for that'd be cool.

394

Like a little floating, like a Grogu pod

395

that, you know, you can carry stuff with.

396

And yeah, I mean, you know,

you can look at a lot of different things.

397

The engineer is John.

398

I apologize for

399

pronouncing his last name,

but he actually did build this thing.

400

It does work.

401

The drone is constructed using 3D

402

printed carbon fiber reinforced nylon.

403

So it's going to be strong enough

to actually work.

404

But the thing of it is, is there's still

some things that need to be worked out.

405

First of all,

the flight time is only about 15 minutes.

406

Wind is a problem because it'll rotor

down, wash, can push the water around.

407

We have all of that kind of a thing.

408

And then there is the possibility

of a safety issue of having four rapidly

409

spinning drone propellers

hovering around people's heads.

410

So, you know,

but I think the idea of it's kind of cool.

411

And I think this is where you start.

412

And I could just, you know, as part

of the futuristic thing, in addition to me

413

having my,

you know, jetpack that I'm flying around

414

and having an umbrella hover over

my head would be kind of cool.

415

I mean, it works with one of those.

416

Hands free umbrella.

417

So tell us about your hands free and roll.

How does it work?

418

It was a hat.

419

Oh, well, yeah,

I think you're gonna say that.

420

It was just a hat and an umbrella on it

421

that.

422

Well, in different news, OpenAI halts

423

AI training on advanced model

as it detects dark signs emerging.

424

Well, that doesn't sound good.

425

No. Is it going grok? No.

426

From what I understand.

427

No, no.

428

We're clear that now,

I did ask AI about this, and I was told

429

there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

So we're good.

430

We're safe.

431

Okay,

432

so what happened

is, is this is a true story.

433

OpenAI has slowed

434

portions of its development program

because two separate things happened.

435

We actually talked about this earlier

in the year,

436

but an earlier OpenAI model

testing incident involving hugging face,

437

which is another AI where an AI system

managed to reach systems outside

438

of his intended environment

and decide to hack them.

439

So that was considered a problem.

440

And what they're looking at here

is a situation

441

where these kind of things,

they want to know what's going on.

442

It doesn't mean that

443

AI has become evil all of a sudden,

you know, or anything like that.

444

It just means that it is doing things

that are unexpected,

445

and it's time to take a step back

and figure out why and what's going on.

446

And could this become a problem?

447

Because one of the things is, is

it's not always the good guys that use AI.

448

And at the end of the day,

if this is possible,

449

we actually do want to know about it,

you know,

450

because it's something

that has to be planned against.

451

We talked earlier in the year

about actual full

452

AI defense and strategies that businesses

are starting to put into place,

453

using AI to defend against AI

and having AI run it.

454

If you haven't heard that episode,

go to User Friendly Dot show

455

because it's there

and it's a very interesting conversation

456

of kind of, you know,

welcome to the future.

457

Oh yeah.

458

So, you know, at the end of the day,

this is a new technology.

459

It's developing and a lot of interesting

things are going to happen.

460

This is user friendly 2.0.

461

We'll be back after the break.

462

He's from the future.

463

He's got a really big computer

464

and he uses it uses it every day.

465

And he uses it uses it in every way.

466

What you use it for, you know, I'm

not that sure because he hears it here.

467

Welcome back.

468

This is user friendly two point out.

469

Check out our website at User Friendly.

470

That is your one stop for everything

user friendly.

471

You can find our back episodes.

472

You can ask questions.

473

You can see what's going on.

474

You can even find out about our smart

speaker Flash Briefing.

475

We have been offering this for a while.

476

We still do.

477

You just need to add it to your flash

briefing.

478

The skills there.

479

Check it out at User Friendly Dot show.

480

All right guys, well, you know, we program

a lot on our listener questions.

481

And we've been having a lot more interest

like a lot more interest

482

in the last six months

or so in retro technology.

483

So we've been covering some of that.

484

And I'm having a lot of fun doing it

because it is actually an area of

485

interest of mine, and

486

it's something that is a lot of fun

487

and is a for example,

488

we've got some projects we're working on

that I got a Sega mega drive,

489

which North American is known

as a Genesis, but mine is actually

490

a mega drive to work in North America

and run the games for both systems.

491

Actually all three.

It runs the Japanese ones too.

492

It was a little bit of a process

to make that function,

493

but that's the kind of stuff

I like to mess with

494

in retro tech and is, I think most people

that have listened for a while know that

495

we like to work with the old video game

cabinets and systems and old computers

496

and radios and all the rest of this stuff,

which is kind of cool. And

497

along

those lines, we get a lot of questions

498

coming in about, you know, how to deal

with all of this stuff.

499

And we're going to talk about some horror

stories that we've dealt with here.

500

Gretchen, in your case, like Merlin

and now the baby laptop.

501

Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. The baby laptop.

502

So, you know, and some other things.

503

But, you know,

one of the interesting things about retro

504

technology

is that we've reached a point where

505

keeping it running is no longer simply

using old equipment.

506

It's preservation and it really is.

507

So when you think about these things,

something like a Commodore 64

508

is more than 40 years old,

509

an original Nintendo

Entertainment System is around 40.

510

Even something we might not instinctively

consider retro, such as an original Xbox

511

or Windows XP computer,

is now more than two decades old.

512

Bill, isn't it,

where to think of an Xbox as retro?

513

Yeah, it is, it is.

514

You know, the thing about it

is, is electronics don't age

515

quite the same way

that furniture or books do.

516

So you can put a book on a shelf

for 30 years and assuming

517

the environment is reasonable,

pull it down and read it.

518

You can put a computer on the shelf

519

for 30 years, pull it down, plug it

in, and, well, not quite so much.

520

You're.

521

Yeah, yeah.

522

And trust me,

the baby laptop was not stored in a barn.

523

It was not stored in out in the,

524

you know, in the yard or in the heat.

525

It was in a climate controlled location.

526

So what Gretchen is referring to

by the baby laptop is an IBM ThinkPad T30.

527

It's the one with the butterfly keyboard.

528

Now, if there are a lot of people

in the community

529

that collect retro laptops,

that is a very sought after one.

530

And the way that we ended up getting it is

I've been in technology

531

since, what, 1998

I think is when we started leaving

532

sooner than that, I think you, you yeah,

you were working on the computer stuff

533

in the early 90s,

like 94 somewhere around there, right?

534

In any event, it was in the 90s.

535

I'm getting old, you know,

I'm a retro electronics now, I think.

536

But we started out with a store in a mall

537

in Reno, Nevada, and this store is gone.

538

The mall is gone.

539

Reno, Nevada,

fortunately, after the fires is not gone.

540

But the point being that

this is how these things have changed,

541

and some of the stuff that we were selling

in that store is now very much retro.

542

Well, during that time, because we were

a startup, didn't have a lot of money.

543

I had a client that was a bank,

and we did the computers for the bank,

544

for the state of Nevada for a long time,

and one day got a call

545

because we would take old equipment,

fix it back up and recycle it

546

and give it back to the schools

547

or other people that could use it

and that type of thing.

548

And in line with

that would get these donations.

549

And one day it's like, well,

the president of the bank,

550

we're merging with another bank.

551

So his office is being cleaned out.

552

So we paid some money

and got everything in the office.

553

It was that kind of a sale.

554

And if it was this little T30

ThinkPad laptop,

555

which I used for a long time afterwards,

556

it would have had to have been 95, 96

because it was running windows 95.

557

Yeah, I remember the windows 95. Yeah.

558

And having a color 640 by 480

559

laptop in that era was a really big deal.

560

I mean, you know, hard

drive in the whole bit.

561

You look at it now, it's like, okay, but

no, it was not something you could afford.

562

These things were in the

563

thousands of dollars, like 4 or $5000

to buy some of this equipment.

564

And, and didn't it have also ports in it

to like the walking station,

565

which also was kind of a big deal.

566

It was what we probably call a sub

notebook these days.

567

But at that time I don't think that term

had been coined yet. No.

568

And so this is one where I was talking

to a friend who's a YouTube content

569

creator that used to work for Microsoft,

and we were talking about it.

570

He was like, oh, you have this, it's

got a time bomb in it.

571

And so, Gretchen, you pulled it out.

572

And what do we find, a time bomb?

573

Oh my God, I felt so bad

574

because I'd take

I had taken really good care of it.

575

I stored it nicely.

576

It was in its case, it was not in a hot or

577

super cold area or or moist area.

578

I thought it was fine.

579

I didn't know that the battery

was going to vomit acid all over it.

580

So that is getting to the point

of anything like this.

581

Even modern electronics

take the batteries out

582

if you're not using them.

583

So you know,

there's some basic maintenance stuff.

584

You have a generator

that's gasoline powered, drain

585

the fuel out of it

when you're gonna put it in storage,

586

or your carburetor will become unhappy

with you.

587

Same kind of an idea

applies to these type of things.

588

You leave batteries in something they will

leak.

589

I'm still looking for my blip.

590

Yeah, well, we had that.

591

We had a little Walkman

that we unpacked from one of your boxes.

592

The battery compartment looked like

it had a disease.

593

It is definitely,

you know, these type of things.

594

And the problem of it is,

595

is that the acid, the alkaline

that comes out of the batteries

596

will corrode everything

in your piece of equipment and destroy it.

597

And these this, this is something

that can absolutely make it to a point

598

where it's not even a feasibility issue

at some points anymore.

599

It's just it's

the end of the end of the line.

600

And in the case of the ThinkPad,

the baby laptop, we had a situation

601

where the battery started leaking

both of them.

602

Also, the internal Bios battery started

leaking the Ram battery,

603

and it kind of exploded

and the capacitor started leaking.

604

And all this stuff put together

looks like it exploded or something.

605

I don't know how to describe that. Yeah.

606

And the one thing that we're a little bit

lucky on this and we are going to restore

607

it is the video components of it,

608

which were the big deal

with the keyboard on that.

609

We're in a metal can

and in the upper part of it.

610

So that part is still working

and the case itself is still okay.

611

We're going to have to replace

the motherboard and some stuff like that.

612

But that's item number one.

613

Take your batteries out if you're going to

store it for any more than a little bit.

614

And again, it's not even just retro tech.

615

We use pocket recorders here at User

Friendly, and we're constantly having it

616

when a season ends and the next season

starts, the 2 or 3 of them get destroyed

617

because the batteries were left in over

the winter.

618

And oh, it's a problem.

619

Yes, that's why

there's been numerous emails about that.

620

But anyway, you want to check this out.

621

And this isn't again,

related to just alkaline batteries.

622

It's basically anything.

623

If you're going to store your device, it

has a battery, pull the battery out of it.

624

We just did that with your game,

boys, Gretchen.

625

And the batteries looked fine.

But it's not that.

626

It's because they can kind of be fine

one day and not the next.

627

Second rule is if you have something

628

that you haven't used

in a while, don't immediately plug it in.

629

This is a

630

common

thing to do, but it is something that

631

you want to really check things

through a little bit before you do that.

632

It can be the difference

between having something

633

that will work again

and something that will never work again.

634

You want to give it an inspection,

so there's some things you look for

635

inside, and we're going to get into this

in a little more detail here.

636

But first of all is swollen

or leaking capacitors.

637

Pastor plague is a thing.

638

We're going to talk about that

in a little bit here.

639

But these are little round canned devices

that are in pretty much everything.

640

There's different versions of it.

641

If you're, say, a collector of retro

Macintosh stuff, there's surface

642

mount capacitors that seem to be going bad

and eating through everything.

643

Older stuff might be through hole.

644

Look online for pictures of these things,

but if they're leaking,

645

if they're swollen, that kind of a thing

that can be a problem.

646

And if you can catch it

before they get real bad and replace them,

647

or at least remove them,

you'll save yourself a lot of grief.

648

So I have a question,

because I'm assuming not everybody is a

649

retro

650

device

enthusiast and understands these things.

651

What about where do you take this stuff?

652

What the like? Have someone fix it?

653

Yeah, or to open it up and look for you

if you don't know.

654

Okay.

655

The best way to handle something

like that.

656

There. Really?

657

I'm sure there's still some out there,

but like the idea of a television repair

658

shop or something,

or computer repair shop,

659

these things don't exist

like they used to.

660

And there's

661

I know there's still a few computer stores

662

around in things,

but even there, if you went in

663

with something that was 40 years

664

old, I don't know that they're going to

really be able to help you much with it.

665

The best way is to go online.

666

There's groups on Facebook and Discord

and other places of communities.

667

There's a lot of enthusiasts

and retro technology and specific kinds

668

where you can usually go online,

ask the question, send pictures.

669

And that's the best way

to get advice on these things.

670

And one of the positives is, is a lot of

these groups are starting to manufacture

671

their own replacements for parts

that are long

672

since out of production and things,

so it usually is possible to fix.

673

But that's where you would go.

674

And Gretchen, it's also a valid question

because in a lot of things you're dealing

675

with mains voltages. Capacitors

hold power.

676

So you do want to be careful

if you don't know what you're doing

677

or don't know how to do it safely,

get some help from somebody that does

678

and the help is available out there.

679

There's a lot of people

that do different things that do that.

680

Corroded batteries is something to look

for that we just talked about.

681

Another one is rust

and another one that I've run into.

682

A little bit of a surprise the first time

with the arcade cabinets is rodents.

683

They seem to love to make their nests

inside things

684

like Gaelic games.

685

And I know when we restored

the Wizard of War, there weren't rodents.

686

But I think there must have been

more spiders in that thing than a colony.

687

It was definitely, you know, stuff

you want to look at and deal with.

688

And the problem with these things

is animals get in and will eat wires

689

and that kind of stuff.

690

And if you just plug it in,

what can happen here is you have a short

691

and it starts burning stuff up.

692

If you find the damage

and can fix the wiring problem beforehand,

693

then you won't have that type of a thing.

694

Other stuff like broken wires

and burn components or things to look for.

695

And one of the other

696

things that I think it's very important on

this is dealing with power supplies.

697

Now we're getting to an area here

where you do

698

have a little bit of technical expertise

to be able to figure this out,

699

but Commodore 64

computers really suffer from this,

700

and a lot of other things

do where the power supplies, usually

701

linear power supplies, are two main types

of power supplies linear and switching.

702

Switching are the modern ones.

703

The older stuff doesn't

necessarily have that.

704

And what will happen is, is when the power

supply fails, it'll do 1 or 2 things.

705

It'll stop working altogether,

which is kind of what you hope

706

it'll start delivering more voltage

than it's supposed to.

707

And that can cause catastrophic failures

in whatever your device might be.

708

And there's actually a really good,

in my opinion, content creator

709

called the eight bit guy on YouTube that

had this happen on one of his episodes,

710

he was showing off a voice system

on his Commodore 64,

711

and all of a sudden

712

the whole thing stopped working

and he was on a regular power supply

713

and it burned out the cartridge,

the computer,

714

the voice synthesizer module,

which was kind of unique, and everything

715

else that was connected to it

because it went from delivering,

716

I think, nine volts to 40 in the space

of about ten minutes. So

717

it is worth the investment

to replace some of these things.

718

Now, on the things like the

719

Atari computers and the Sega consoles

and some of these other things,

720

they actually do run off five volts.

721

So there's some kits out there

you can get to convert them over to USB.

722

So you no longer even need the power

bricks, which is really kind of nice.

723

You know,

I have an Atari XJS eight bit computer,

724

which was a video game console

based on their original eight bit line

725

that came out in the late 80s,

that I just have a converter

726

and I plug it into USB,

727

and the original power brick

was this big, huge, heavy thing.

728

The USB is regulated,

you know, and all of that type of thing.

729

So it saved having to buy

what would have been an $80 power

730

supply replacement,

and it's safer to use it that way.

731

So it's an option.

732

Not everything you can do that way,

but that is definitely something

733

that's the case.

734

And then the other thing of it

is, is to see

735

if someone else has been in there

before you previous repairs. I

736

commend the community

and you've got to learn somewhere,

737

and there's nothing wrong with that.

738

But a lot of retro equipment you get now

might be someone else's project

739

that they've given up on,

so you want to make sure that they didn't

740

do something that is going to cause

problems, you know, that kind of a thing.

741

And if they did repair something

that's done correctly,

742

my experience with

that is most of the time it is.

743

But there are times

I've run into some really weird things.

744

A lot can happen in 40 years, you know?

745

Yeah.

746

So again, your power source is batteries

and your

747

power supplies are a big deal.

748

There was another thing

that you would bring up when we're trying

749

to open something that is like 40

or 30 years old, that some of the plastic

750

can get kind of brittle

and you have to be really careful.

751

Otherwise

you might actually break it, like

752

I kind of did on my Merlin brittle

plastic.

753

Yes. Yeah.

754

And I think it's a good point to remember

this equipment was not made

755

from the concept of somebody's

going to be using it 40 years from now.

756

Yeah.

757

The only reason arcade cabinets are built

758

as well as they are,

because they were in an environment

759

where they were going to be abused

and in arcade.

760

So that helps.

761

But again, the idea is not that

we're making something that you can use,

762

you know, on down the road.

763

So yes, the plastics are a big deal.

764

Things break.

765

Now, Gretchen,

766

you're talking about a merlin,

which is a late 70s little handheld game.

767

Tell us a little bit about it.

768

Oh, it was

it kind of looked like a telephone.

769

And there were a variety of,

like, sound and memory games

770

that you could play with it and it

771

you would just play these different games.

772

And it had was batteries

that you would use

773

and yeah, you had me

774

checking it to make sure the batteries

didn't do something bad.

775

And they did.

776

But when I was trying to open it

and I wasn't rough with it, I,

777

I broke the back door. Yeah.

778

And you had to have someone

do a special repair for me.

779

Replacement for it. So. Yeah.

780

So Gretchen's 1978 in box Merlin

781

with the instructions,

with the instructions

782

and the original carton

and in perfect cosmetic condition

783

after we hired an armored car

784

to bring it from her house to my lab,

we got it out to take a look at it.

785

And the the battery cover had just broken.

786

And again, nothing you did wrong.

787

It just broke because of the age.

788

Yeah.

789

And yeah, the batteries had leaked

in that one quite badly.

790

We actually had to change the keypad on it

because it had gotten into the contacts,

791

the battery acid.

792

And, you know, again, fortunately, there's

793

enough of a community

that you're able to get the parts.

794

You got to find the blip.

795

I got to find the blip and the

796

and the other little game

that looks like you're playing baseball.

797

It was really popular during the mid 70s.

798

These little hand.

799

There was football, baseball

and basketball, and I had the baseball one

800

and a little red dot would,

you know, go around to the bases.

801

I'm sure anybody my age would go,

802

oh yeah, I remember somebody who had one

series of games like that.

803

They are mechanical.

804

And that's the other thing

you want to think about

805

is you don't want to just throw batteries

in them, because little motor

806

sees up over time and stuff.

807

And in a lot of cases,

if you go through and lubricate the thing

808

and you'll get it back and running,

but if you put power to it

809

and the motor can't work,

it'll just burn it out.

810

And that can be unobtainable

to try to replace those.

811

So, you know

812

again I think all right.

813

So let's talk capacitors a little bit

814

because we kind of talked about this

in the beginning of this segment.

815

And this is something

I get a lot of questions on.

816

And again if you are somebody that's

just getting into this or just curious,

817

there's a lot of places to go online

and watch videos about capacitors.

818

Even look at pictures

to see what they are.

819

They come in a lot of different styles

and designs.

820

A little too much of a deep

dive to get into here,

821

except for one style

which is called an electrolytic

822

capacitors,

which seems to cause a lot of problems.

823

And what happens

is they start leaking and the solution

824

in that stuff starts leaking

and it will get into everything else.

825

I've seen pinball machines

where capacitors

826

and batteries have leaked,

and it actually starts

827

going over the wiring

from one board to the other. Somehow.

828

I do not know how that works.

829

I'm sure somebody in the chemistry

could describe it, but it is.

830

It's like getting cancer in it

831

and trying to get rid of

it can be a huge, huge mess.

832

But the YouTube community

seems to have this idea

833

that the first thing you should do

is replace all the capacitors.

834

And this is also not true.

835

Not every capacitor is a bad capacitor,

and you have to look at some different

836

things and decide

what's going on from that.

837

These have gone through phases.

838

So in the 90s

there was a bad capacitor time.

839

And you were talking about in the 2000

this happened to I think, yeah, around

840

2007, 2008, at least it happened in Dell.

841

Yeah. I'll just be honest.

842

It was a double computer problem

and it was one system

843

and they got a bad running capacitors.

844

And I probably swapped out

100 motherboards.

845

So you were actually involved in the

in the repair of that at that time.

846

Because I know there's

a lot of accusations

847

that Dell wasn't completely coming

clean on what was going on either.

848

And it was a situation

849

where Inspiron I think wasn't an Inspiron

that were experiencing spirit.

850

Yeah, yeah, it was it was a

it was a business computer.

851

Yeah.

852

It's the kind of dark gray black box

that everyone had.

853

And it believe it or not.

854

Those are retro

and somewhat collectible now.

855

And and what Bill is talking about

is they got bad capacitors.

856

The story on this

and I haven't been able to verify it,

857

is that the company that was manufacturing

the capacitors originally, Dale

858

went to another company

to source them cheaper, and it was like

859

some sort of an industrial espionage thing

that the original engineer

860

that was making them for the company

that originally manufactured

861

and moved to this other company,

but wasn't given the whole formula.

862

So what he started doing

based on their original thing,

863

created a capacitor

that was good for a year or two

864

and then would start leaking

because it was missing stuff.

865

I'm sure there's a better

way to explain that, but

866

wow. And that sense, you know,

867

that's what we were dealing with,

which means you have a period in there

868

where your computer, if you don't change

the caps, it's probably already too late.

869

And if you're lucky enough

870

and want one of those,

they're becoming collectible

871

because there's not

that many of them still out there.

872

The other one that we talked about

was the early Macs.

873

So this would be like your Mac classic,

your tools that era

874

the onboard capacitors,

especially on the logic board.

875

The analog board fared a little better,

but they can have their problems too.

876

But the logic board, the surface

mount caps start leaking.

877

And then if you have your pyramid battery

blow up on top of that,

878

you have a toxic wasteland

inside of that thing

879

that is going to be very difficult

to repair.

880

And it's gone to an extent

881

now that in the retro Mac community,

they actually have people

882

that have designed new, better boards,

some of the chips you can't get any more.

883

So what you do is

you actually have the company like PCB way

884

or something, manufacture

the motherboard, you get it back

885

and then you transplant

886

the chips that you can't

get to the new one, replace

887

all the other components

and repair it that way.

888

And that's a lot of work.

889

Oh yeah.

890

So YouTube creator this does not compute.

891

Actually did a whole thing on that.

892

And he actually had some boards made

and then had a little problem.

893

These are some of the other things

you have to look for

894

is that the boards that were made,

they put the wrong kind of diodes on it,

895

so they couldn't get them up and running

until they figured it out.

896

It was a factory error, I think.

897

So then they had to go through

and they had like 50 boards made,

898

and then they were having to go through

and hand replace something like

899

ten diodes that were surface

mount components on each of these boards.

900

That would be a lot of work to.

901

But it's, you know, it's part of it.

902

So if you can save all this

by avoiding it,

903

by changing your capacitors

or having somebody do it for you

904

in the event that it's actually needed,

then it will save you some things.

905

I think batteries are far worse

than capacitors though.

906

And again, it depends on the era

I was working on in television,

907

which is an early game

console of the Atari era, early

908

80s, full of capacitors,

and they're all fine.

909

It's 40 years old,

but there's if I replaced them,

910

what I'm putting in there

probably wouldn't

911

last as long as these

would if I leave them alone.

912

So you do have to consider that as well,

you know?

913

But again, saving

this stuff is a matter now of maintenance.

914

And as time goes by, it's becoming

a little bit more and more important.

915

The other thing that's interesting too,

is that I found in some cases

916

simply removing capacitors

in certain situations,

917

if you're going to store

it is actually just fine,

918

because not having the capacitor in there

does not necessarily mean it won't work.

919

A lot of them are for filtering other

things for like line noise and stuff.

920

Sometimes, if the best way you can tell,

usually if you have an issue like this,

921

if you have a device that is working and

it starts to intermittently stop working.

922

I'm having this right now

with one of my weather displays

923

with a backlight is starting to act up,

and it's probably capacitors going out.

924

It'll light up and sometimes it's dim

and that kind of a thing.

925

These are things to look for

that would definitely look at that

926

kind of a thing

as being a problem. So yeah.

927

Definitely different things

928

that take about and this is a topic

that we could go on for a long time.

929

I don't know, Bill,

have you had any horror stories?

930

You've run into this?

931

I know you talked about Dell.

932

That was the big one.

933

I mean, I've had a few pieces

of other retro tech that I've opened up

934

that have had bad caps that have popped.

935

But honestly, my horror

936

story was a lot wrapped wires.

937

Oh, oh, tell us.

938

We've got a few seconds here left.

939

Tell us about that.

940

Well, in older electronics,

I used to use a lot of cloth wrapped ones

941

and the cloth would just disintegrate,

leaving a completely bare wire.

942

Oh, okay.

943

And that can have, you know,

what could possibly go wrong there?

944

You know, like the old Christmas lights.

945

Really old ones. Well,

if you have anything. Yeah.

946

They use cloth for

have wires in the walls at 1.2

947

I think, you know, it's

that was the thing.

948

The one thing I've run into is

I have a really old radio from the 30s I'm

949

restoring that has asbestos wrapped wires,

which is breaking down.

950

So that's the problem.

951

Like I'm sending it to a professional

to clean that for me,

952

that knows how to do it

properly and dispose of the waste from it,

953

the way that's safe

954

and all the rest of it,

because that's a little beyond

955

my capability

or anything I'd be comfortable with.

956

So, you know, definitely things to

think about, but do some research online.

957

If this is something

that you're interested in.

958

There is a huge community of people

that are very happy to help and

959

are absolutely wonderful resources

to get this stuff out.

960

And most of the time,

the problem you're having is something

961

that somebody else has already experienced

and found a solution to.

962

And till next week.

963

This is user friendly 2.0 keeping

you safe on the cutting edge.

964

User friendly 2.0.

965

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966

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967

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968

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969

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970

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971

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972

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