Cleaning stuff, keyboards, etc
Yeah, mechanical keyboards that come with different WASD keys always come with key pullers. I got one with my Corsair K70.
As far as cleaning goes, take it apart so you can take the electronics out. Warm soapy water and a sponge should do the trick. Maybe a toothbrush to get in crevasses. You might not want to use anything too abrasive to scrub with, you might scratch up softer plastics.
For anything that has yellowed, you'll have to use Retr0bright:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0brightSarge wrote:I wouldn't sweat finding a 486, personally. I found that for the most part, a Pentium or Pentium 2 was just fine as well, although you might have to use a slowdown app for really old games that didn't throttle properly. I used to use an app called MoSlo or something like that, which just chews up extra cycles to make things run slower.
That's exactly why I got rid of the 486 that I had. I haven't yet tried a game that was CPU speed dependent, so I haven't yet needed any of those slow down apps, but I am aware of them.
Getting a 486, or anything that would be a DOS/Win3 box, isn't for compatibility reasons though. In this case, collecting the hardware is as much fun for me as collecting the games.
What's even worse is, the 486 that I got rid of wasn't the only 486 I owned. It was a nice little desktop box, and that's why I saved it. At one time, I had SEVERAL 486 towers, all custom built, that I scored from a side of the road pickup. They all had the CPU and RAM pulled, and some of the HDDs were missing, but other than that they were all complete. I threw them all away at one point, mainly because of space issues. Damn, I could have sold each one of those on eBay these days for like $100 each I bet.
Best I can tell, my family's first computer was a Compaq Presario 4122. It had a Pentium 150Ghz, 16MB of RAM, a 2.5GB HDD, and Windows 95. The monitor had those speakers that attached to the sides, and the power button for the monitor was also the volume control for the speakers. The desktop had multimedia controls as well as this moon button that I never knew what it did. It's so dumb looking, I was thinking about picking one up just for nostalgia. There's one on eBay right now, but it looks kinda nasty.
But anyways, I don't have any nostalgia for the 486's, I just kinda want a machine that I can do a DOS/Win3 setup on just because. I use to use DOS in school and at the library before my family got their first computer, so maybe I have the slightest bit of nostalgia for it.
noiseredux wrote:oh man, I think I want totally ordered this book:
I might have to get one of those. It would be sweet on my shelf with all my big box games.
