{"id":2188,"date":"2013-10-24T17:05:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T23:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mountainouswords.com\/mountain-air\/?p=2188"},"modified":"2024-02-08T13:08:45","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T19:08:45","slug":"retr0bright-restoration-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mountainouswords.com\/mountain-air\/retr0bright-restoration-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Retrobright Restoration Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. He told me to wear a brown tie.\u201d
\n~<\/i>Rodney Dangerfield<\/p>\n

(Warning: there\u2019s some real chemistry here, so make sure to use the appropriate protection when goofing around with potentially dangerous recipes you find on the Internet. Or in other words, if you go blind trying to shine up your Sega Dreamcast, it\u2019s your own fault!) <\/i><\/p>\n

\"NES

The controller on the left is my original and un-yellowed NES Advantage (the control group — ha-ha, get it?) On the right is a poor, yellowed Advantage.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you mention to people you\u2019re using open-source chemistry found on the Internet, most will (rightly) assume you\u2019ve opened up your own meth lab. The exception may be when the aforementioned person is a fan of classic video gaming. In that case, they may be snapping on their rubber gloves and donning their finest protective eyewear to concoct retr0bright<\/a>. Retr0bright sounds like it may add sparkle to your smile\u2014and it very well might\u2014but as far as gaming goes, its purpose is to clean up the yellowed plastic elements of old electronics. <\/b><\/p>\n

Old Yeller<\/b><\/h2>\n

The 1980s were a halcyon period for home computing. Systems such as the Commodore 64, the Apple IIe and even the humble Nintendo Entertainment System bring nerds back to a kinder, gentler time when DOS ruled the world and the hero of your favorite video game was likely an animated block. But Father Time is relentless as a hungry cat that won\u2019t stop meowing at your door while you\u2019re trying to write a retr0bright article. He has blighted many hearty electronics cases with an ugly, asparagus-pee yellow hue that often belies the hearty (and still functional) circuitry within. In a baffling display of randomness, certain models of the exact same system might remain immune to discoloration while others would look like they\u2019ve been left at the bottom of a swamp for decades.<\/p>\n

\"SNES

This sad SNES was left for dead and has dog hair on it for extra pathetic-ness. Even the bottom yellowed. The game port on the top and the “EXT” tab on the bottom show the color the console is supposed to be.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yellowed systems were a double-edged sword with +3 wisdom and -3 charm. Although many of these old-time consoles and keyboards functioned just fine, their cosmetic deficiencies allowed collectors to acquire them cheaply. However, trying to remove the yellow turned out to be a sticky wicket. The obvious clean-up attempts\u2014think \u201cYou\u2019ve tried scrubbing it out\u2026\u201d here\u2014all resulted in marginal and occasionally disastrous results. Plastic, unlike human teeth, does not bleach well. Even if there was a slight change in hue, the harsh chemical reaction left plastic brittle and wimpy. Elbow-greased-powered soap and water was a lesson in futility as the ugly yellow would mock even the mightiest of scubbings. Everything from toothpaste to turpentine was employed in an attempt to un-yellow plastic, and they all failed.<\/p>\n

But we nerds are a relentless group and we tend to have a lot of evenings open so it was only a matter of time before some really smart guys were able to crack the mystery of the yellowed electronics.<\/p>\n

Chemistry 101 or Why Does it Look Like Someone Peed on my Super Nintendo?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Many famous scientists, from Bill Nye to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, have said for years that chemistry is pretty neat, and it turns out they were right, at least when it comes to classic gaming systems. What follows is a VERY basic explanation of why certain plastics turn yellow (for a more detailed account, check out the retr0bright<\/a> site).<\/p>\n

Affordable, durable plastics are a complicated science, but here\u2019s a simple overview: a large majority of computers and game systems made in the 1980s used ABS plastics (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) due to their low cost and sturdy constitution. At the time, ABS mixtures had a quirky characteristic in that whenever the prime ingredients were mixed; they tended to bond differently from batch to batch. You ended up with the same product but not always with the same structure (this is similar to the way human DNA binds and why you may not look anything like your sibling despite being made of the same \u201cingredients\u201d). As a result, some moldings made of the exact same material have resisted yellowing while others began to fade in only a few short years.<\/p>\n

Despite the differences in chemical make-up, ABS plastics of all blends would never yellow if nothing was added to them. The downside of this is they would also burst into flames at the slightest exposure to heat, so something has to be added to make plastics fireproof. Enter the main culprit at the heart of our yellowing dilemma, the unstable element bromine. Bromine is a brownish chemical that easily blends into ABS mixtures and renders it flame retardant. The problem with bromine is that bonds rather loosely to its partner elements. In certain ABS mixtures, the bromine remains relatively stable and in-check. Modern plastics have solved this problem by chemically stabilizing bromine in their mixtures. But in the 1980s the science was still incomplete and with it came risk that bromine molecules could go rogue.<\/p>\n

When bromine is exposed to UV light, it gets excited. Like any good molecule looking for a good time and in a state of excitement, it has the tendency to vibrate away from its stabilizing element (in this case, hydrogen) and seeks out a new life in the big, periodical chart city. Bromine is prone to the same bad behavior as your buddy who ends up marrying that crazy chick he should have never hooked up with in the first place. Bromine readily bonds with oxygen, a semi-reliable partner that is never as stable as the good ol\u2019 days of hydrogen. Once locked in with oxygen, bromine has a difficult time escaping and even when it does, a new hydrogen molecule can be tough to find and thus it is prone to re-bonding with another oxygen molecule. The more bromine fuses with oxygen and away from hydrogen, the more the brownish tint emerges, resulting in yellowed plastic (it would eventually turn completely brown if left alone for another decade or so).<\/p>\n

Before you blame UV light for being the catalyst that ruins the beautiful hydrogen-bromine marriage, it turns out that this same UV is going to be the hero of our story. Remember that UV excites bromine in a way like no other wavelength of light can. On a microscopic level, UV vibrates a bromine molecule until it breaks free so the trick here is to have a readily available source of hydrogen molecules for bromine to latch onto. This stabilizes the hydrogen, the bromine and the oxygen and the upshot is your smokers\u2019 teeth yellow Nintendo reverts back to its beautiful original color.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one last problem with this equation, namely that hydrogen on its own tends not to want to be associated with a low-life like bromine. Add to that, hydrogen is a willing partner with oxygen so there needs to be a way to \u201cactivate\u201d a hydrogen-oxygen solution to break apart the bond, releasing oxygen and setting up single molecules of hydrogen ready to latch on to bromine.<\/p>\n

\"Retrobright

Chemicals to the rescue!<\/p><\/div>\n

Hunting Down the Ingredients<\/b><\/h2>\n

The dudes who eventually solved the yellowing mystery did the community a great service by finding every day, perfectly legal ingredients to create the gel-based solution known as retr0bright. Again, for more details and options, please visit the retr0bright open-source web site. Here\u2019s what I used:<\/p>\n