You don’t have to be a smoker to know the pain of yellowing hardware. Any beige box of a certain age starts to darken and stain like an Englishman’s teeth, turning beautiful retro hardware into the equivalent of a filthy, leering uncle, something to hide, not flaunt.
The reason? Retards. The ABS used for these old machines was rendered flame-retardant with chemical treatments. These chemicals are the ones which cause this unsightly yellowing and until now the only fix was an equally ugly coat of paint.
Retr0bright to the rescue! In a twisting story that started with German boffins and English Amiga nerds, it was eventually discovered that bromine was the yellowing agent, and UV light didn’t help either. The McGyver-esque answer is a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and a dash of commercial laundry booster "Oxy". Paint this on, stick the old computer out in the sun (or under a UV lamp) and several hours later you have a shiny white machine.
The folks at the Retr0bright project will sell you a gel, but if you actually own old hardware then its likely you’re a tinkerer already, in which case you can make your own. Full instructions are on the Retr0bright wiki, but the short recipe is this: Take a weak (10%) solution of hydrogen peroxide, add a dash of Oxy, apply and leave in the sun for an afternoon. That’s it.
Caution: Does not work on English teeth.
The “Retr0bright” Project [Retrobright via Lifehacker]
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