This discussion was/is about hardware, which is necessarily made of a variety of materials. When you add water, bad things tend to happen.
ALL plastics are permeable to water - including the plastic used to package ICs. After a few months, it achieves hydration equilibrium that changes with the seasons. THIS is why the military has banned plastic transistors and ICs. Nonetheless, "modern" ICs incorporate dissimilar metals in their pins than they use in their bonding wires, and non-military ICs (and the transistors used in my 40-year-old analog computer) are cast in water-permeable plastic. Vacuum tubes didn't have these problems - but they had different problems. They had a very limited operational life, and the electrolytic capacitors they used back then only lasted a few years. Now, if you find an old vacuum tube device, the first thing you must do is to find and replace all of its electrolytic capacitors. Just watch in case someone like me has already done this - by re-stuffing the original antique capacitors with modern contents. A common problem that persists from vacuum tubes to present day is the aging of controls. Old volume controls and switches accumulated dirt and corrosion and stopped working. Old dial cords simply fell apart. "Modern" keyboards don't last much longer. Hence, an early step to restoring any antique device is careful inspection and repair of its controls. Steve =================== On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Logan Streondj <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Eugene Surowitz <[email protected]>wrote: > >> And be careful of the metal for notebooks: >> At 50 years: a decent rag content paper is yellow free and flexible; >> at 50 years: an aluminum car body is turning to dust. >> > > could you provide some references for that? > with an iron car frame that is believable, > however aluminum is highly corrosion resistant. > Here is the first statue cast in aluminum 1893 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eros-piccadilly-circus.jpg > after over a century it is still shiny.. > > As long as you don't use aluminum as an anode in a battery, it'll maintain > it's corrosion resistive abilities. > > > >> Quill pens anybody? >> >> Gene > > > make sure to use only alkaline paper and inks for archival. > I use acid-free paper for my printing my blogs. > If I had my own laser printer could print them on aluminum foil. > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
