Anyone know for sure whether or not bleach can damage HuCard contacts?

[CrackTiger]

I've got a yellowed HuCard game on the way and would like to try bleaching it back to white. But not unless I am certain that it won't damage the game.

[CGQuarterly]

Bleach is corrosive.  It even corrodes stainless steel.  So I personally wouldn't want to expose a HuCard to it.

Chris

[PCEngineHell]

You can try sealing off the chip area of the hucard with tape, but honestly Id not bother trying this one with bleach. You need to try to find a method that doesn't require submerging the whole card.

[grahf]

How about mixing the bleach with vaseline, or something similar? As long as the bleach doesn't react with it, doing so would allow you to slather it on without having to submerge it.

[RegalSin]

How about a picture of the Hu-card, for starters. I have so many, I do not think there would be a reason to bleach one.

[soop]

Do NOT bleach.  You need some retr0brite.  The yellowing is due to bromine iirc, it's built into plastics as a flame retardant.
http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/

[CrackTiger]

Do NOT bleach.  You need some retr0brite.  The yellowing is due to bromine iirc, it's built into plastics as a flame retardant.
http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/

Bleach works like magic on white PCE systems. This particular HuCard reeks of cigarette smoke.

Sounds like I'm stuck with a fugly game. :/

[Bernie]

Spray a shirt or hand towel with some sort of perfume.  Not saturate it, just heavily spray it.  Then wrap the HuCARD up in it for a couple days.  I've had to do this with some smelly games and manuals that smelled of smoke.  Works great.

[Tatsujin]

yeah black, show us that huey first. what game is it? if you gonna try to bleach it, try first with a 50 cent game like F1 Race or loose wonder momo..lol

i also would suggest to cover the pins with vinyl-tape or such. i wouldn't even put the huey thta much into the bleach. not even until the black area.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Do NOT bleach.  You need some retr0brite.  The yellowing is due to bromine iirc, it's built into plastics as a flame retardant.
http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/

retrobrite is a dumb hipster concept made by bathroom chemists and made popular by retarded Amiga/C64 enthusiasts that glom onto anything that might somehow relate to their computers.   Half the ingredients are useless.    Xanth gum, glycerine?  Who cares about that shit.  That's to get it to some form of goopy consistency so you can make a mess and get two-toned results.   

The key ingredient is the peroxide.  Even the oxyclean is mostly useless.   You're bleaching the plastic back.  The OxyClean is just to make you think you're doing something cool.  Plus, once you add oxyclean in, I believe you cant even reseal what you didn't use, because it will foam up and blow up.   Peroxide on it's own can blow up if it's concentrated enough.


Just go buy some 40vol cream developer from a beauty salon, and paint it on the card with a brush of some variety, and stick it in:

A) The sun.   Real sunlight is far more effective than a stupid UVB bulb like all the tards online will tell you to use for best results..  Kind of like how I stick my lizards outside in the summer and they get the required amount of UV in ~30-45 mins, as opposed to 8 hours under those expensive fuckin' bulbs.  The sun is free. 

B) Stick it under a UVB bulb.  Go get one from a petstore for like 10$.  The tropical variety (5.0) is probably good enough. 


I used to bleach old computers from the C= world in a fishtank full of 40vol peroxide that I stuck in my driveway.  Then we upgraded to using a clear bag and a vacuum to minimize the required peroxide amount.    In our case, we used the Clear Developer, instead of Cream, since we fully submerged the plastic.

You want to use the cream, since its thick and paint-on-able.  Even a thin layer should do the trick.  Theres a picture floating around of a yellow C128D that was done this way, and looked brand-new afterwards.  Screw all that retrobrite crap.

Also, you can get this jug of crap called Urine Rescue.  It's super-concentrated piss-remover.  I used to mix it 50/50 with hosewater and got the same kind of bleaching results when Sally Beauty stopped letting me buy 10 jugs of developer at a time because all the teenywhores couldn't highlight their hair anymore.

[Frank_fjs]

retrobrite is a dumb hipster concept

The key ingredient is the peroxide.

Just go buy some 40vol cream developer from a beauty salon, and paint it on the card with a brush of some variety, and stick it in:

A) The sun.   Real sunlight is far more effective than a stupid UVB bulb like all the tards online will tell you to use for best results..  The sun is free. 

+1 to the above.

40 vol cream peroxide and a bit of sunlight is all you need, retrobrite is needlessly complicated and doesn't even work as well.

[soop]

Huh!  Did not know that! well, the important bits.

Also, you can get this jug of crap called Urine Rescue.  It's super-concentrated piss-remover. 

:S

I used to mix it 50/50 with hosewater and got the same kind of bleaching results when Sally Beauty stopped letting me buy 10 jugs of developer at a time because all the teenywhores couldn't highlight their hair anymore.

What kind of idiot store a) cares who buys what, as long as they're selling it and b) doesn't buy more stock of something that doesn't expire after the first couple of times they sell a shitload?

[Arkhan Asylum]

Urine Rescue is just high concentration peroxide stuff.

What kind of idiot store a) cares who buys what, as long as they're selling it and b) doesn't buy more stock of something that doesn't expire after the first couple of times they sell a shitload?

Small beauty supply stores.  They eventually concluded I was not using it for hair, and stopped selling it to me in large quantities.

The reason for this is mostly safety.

You can use those 5$ bottles of developer to make bombs.

[CrackTiger]

Thanks for the tips Arkhan, I'll look into that beauty product.

The other thing I was thinking about is just dipping the bottom half of the game in bleach and maybe wiping a small amount around other areas with a damp cloth and then sitting it in the sun.

I'm more concerned about the yellowing than the stink, which is easier to get rid of. Like I said in my original post, I don't actually have possession of the game yet. The image I based my purchase on looked like it might be a bit yellowed in spots, but the condition was described as "like new". I had to have someone buy it for me and they informed me that it's actually worse than it appeared. I also wound up paying more for it than I planned, so it's now in a bubble zone between worth trying to whiten but not worth spending much to do it. :p

The main reason why I asked though, is because I might want to whiten other HuCards as well.

[OldRover]

You can use those 5$ bottles of developer to make bombs.

Yeah, you definitely look like the psycho type.

j/k

[Arkhan Asylum]

I'd be careful with Clorox bleach.  It might discolor the text and shit on the card.

Peroxide didn't seem to do the same.

That stuff at the beauty supply store, the developer, comes in a few strengths...

there's 10, 20, 40.. and 50 (you cant buy that without a license).

It's just the concentration of Peroxide inside.

drugstore peroxide is the same shit, but the strength of peroxide is so low, its not useful.

de-yellowing it will desmell it too.


The yellow-stuff is also the stuff that smells.  Dissolving it = win.

you could put some baking soda in the developer to aid in the cleaning process.

It's basically the same as ghetto-fab teeth whitening at that point.

[Tatsujin]

you can make bombs much much smaller, more handy and way more efficient. but am not gonna tell this here now

[VestCunt]

Really? I know we can't talk about ROMs, but I thought bombs were fair game.

[NecroPhile]

Really? I know we can't talk about ROMs, but I thought bombs were fair game.

Bazzy's afraid his police record for felonious poster displays will bring the secret police knocking on his door if he starts talking about explosives.

[GohanX]

I had no idea, I've been wanting to make some retr0brite for ages now but can't find a local source of xanthan gum. Thanks for the knowledge, there are plenty of Sally's here!

[Digi.k]

I use white spirit on mine

[Arkhan Asylum]

I had no idea, I've been wanting to make some retr0brite for ages now but can't find a local source of xanthan gum. Thanks for the knowledge, there are plenty of Sally's here!

its at walmart.  it's useless.  I wouldn't be shocked if the stuff is already in the cream developer.  It's mostly used as a thickening agent, or a thing-to-hold-it-all-together.

Whatever the scientific word for that is.   It's likely already in the thick, cream version.

[Tatsujin]

Really? I know we can't talk about ROMs, but I thought bombs were fair game.

Bazzy's afraid his police record for felonious poster displays will bring the secret police knocking on his door if he starts talking about explosives.

this

[BigusSchmuck]

You guys really should pay attention to my sig, there is a reason why you don't submerge your hucards in any kind of liquid. I have used a little bit of rubbing alcohol in the past with qtips to clean some of my old snes cartridges but I dunno about cleaning hucards with it.

[Tatsujin]

Sig? There ain't no sig.












I know, it's your avatlar 

[CrackTiger]

You guys really should pay attention to my sig, there is a reason why you don't submerge your hucards in any kind of liquid. I have used a little bit of rubbing alcohol in the past with qtips to clean some of my old snes cartridges but I dunno about cleaning hucards with it.

I wash all my HuCards in the kitchen sink with sponges and they all come out looking and working like new.

[soop]

You guys really should pay attention to my sig, there is a reason why you don't submerge your hucards in any kind of liquid. I have used a little bit of rubbing alcohol in the past with qtips to clean some of my old snes cartridges but I dunno about cleaning hucards with it.

I wash all my HuCards in the kitchen sink with sponges and they all come out looking and working like new.

Yeah I think the avatar refers explicitly to milk.

[CrackTiger]

I couldn't take good pictures with any of the cameras I have, so I scanned it in before and after. The yellowing looks/looked worse in person.

I sat the HuCard in a small cup of bleach. It sat on an angle so that everything from 5mm below the pins and lower was submerged for 2 - 3 days. I also scrubbed it with a toothbrush a couple times.

Because HuCard plastic is much harder than white PC Engine console plastic, the bleach had more of an effect on the label paint. But it was definitely worth it to essentially have a like-new, completely clean and non-stinky HuCard. I'd rather have a worn and clean item than anything mint and tainted. After thoroughly rinsing it, I gave it the usual HuCard soap/sponge cleaning in my kitchen sink.

[PCEngineHell]

Got to be totally honest with you, that didn't turn out well at all, but if you are satisfied, that's all that matters. Might be best next time to cover the paint areas with clear tape to prevent damage to the paint.

[CrackTiger]

Got to be totally honest with you, that didn't turn out well at all, but if you are satisfied, that's all that matters. Might be best next time to cover the paint areas with clear tape to prevent damage to the paint.

Like I said, it might as well have been in someone's anus. I didn't want the painted area to reek, otherwise there was no point. I didn't plan to keep it soaking for as long as I did, but wound up away from home for a day and a half. I used a little bleach on a q-tip to wipe the rest except the pins, which I cleaned with isopropyl. Because of the way I obtained the game, there wasn't much I could do other than make the best of the situation. I'm not a fan of the game and am not an elite condition-based collector. I just want to be able to play games with tainting my consoles.

[Bernie]

Yeah, I guess in that kinda situation ya gotta choose bad or worse.

[CrackTiger]

I tested it out afterward and it works fine, so I'm happy. I'd be more disappointed if it was Magical Chase.

[fraggore]

should have just used some isopropyl alcohol on it cleans them up a treat takes all the crap off them and cleans the connectors right up no damage but does nothing for yellowing.

well if it smells like arse and now it dont and your happy job done.