My Big Fat Retro Computing Buying Guide

Lots of goodies to get you started cleaning, restoring, and maintaining your retro habits!

A couple months back I mentioned that I signed up for an Amazon Associate (affiliate) account. I linked to an item or two, but since then I hadn't really done much to promote it and I need to, so now I bring you My Big Fat Retro Computing Buying! The goal of this list is not to be an exhaustive list of everything you need to get into retro repair and maintenance, but to provide a few options based on my own experiences of things that might be helpful to have on hand.

When I first got into the hobby of retro gaming and vintage computing I found one thing to be true: time isn’t kind to old hardware. Plastics chip, scratch, break, and yellow. Capacitors budge and leak. Batteries die, and components fail. In order to keep everything alive, you’ve got to get your hands “dirty” and start replacing old parts; you have to learn how those systems work and what they’re capable of, and once you figure that out you can easily max them out for a small investment and give them the kind of power that would make IT bosses in 1998 salivate.

This list will be categorized into several categories:

1. Tools

2. Restoration Supplies

3. Hardware Upgrades

4. Power

Tools

• Professional electronics repair kit - There are plenty of repair kits out there, and no doubt you’ve heard of the iFixIt kits from various tech video channels and the like. This one here is an 82 piece set from XOOL, and it’s the one I use both at home and at work. It’s comes with a 52 bit precision screwdriver set, plastic and metal spudgers, electronics picks, an ESD bracelet, a box cutter, and various other tools for opening up and repairing desktops, laptops, phones, MP3 players, etc.
  

• IDE/SATA to USB Adapter - This is an updated version of the first piece of support tech I ever bought. You can plug in either an IDE or SATA hard drive of any size and connect it to your computer via USB. What I like about this particular model is that it comes with an external power supply. For 2.5 inch SSD and HDD drives, you don’t need the extra juice, but if you’re trying to recover data from an old 3.5 inch IDE hard drive you’re going to need more power than what the USB bus on your computer can put out.
  

• SATA to USB Adapter - Now if you’re really only working with SATA drives, and you don’t want something that takes up too much space, this adapter is probably right up your alley. Plug your SATA drive into one end, and plug the USB cable into your computer. Easy peasy. Once again, I opted for one that had an external power as well because I’ve grown tired of dealing with adapters that don’t provide enough in line power to spin up the disk.
  

• USB Hard Drive Dock - Now if space isn’t an issue for you, I’d go with one of these. These docks are great and I prefer the ones with two drive bays. They’re great for cloning drives with something like Macrium Reflect (Windows), SuperDuper! (Mac), or dd (Linux). The USB 3.0 bus is also fast enough to effectively boot into other operating systems without actually having to dual boot your machine or open it up and swap drives out. I keep mine plugged into my desktop and use it quite frequently.
  

• Weller WE1010NA 70 watt digital soldering station - I LOVE this thing. You’ve seen it before, but this is the soldering station I use at work and it’s fantastic. I know there are other stations out there that are way better and cost way more, but for the cost you can’t really beat the Weller WE1010NA. It maintains it’s temperature very well and if appearance means anything to you, I think it looks much more mature/professional than the blue and yellow Hakko machines.

  • Brass shavings - The Weller station comes with a sponge to clean the tips of your soldering iron, but what I’ve discovered is that the brass shavings method of cleaning is more effective. When you use a wet sponge it cools the tip which draws more power and you have to wait a second for it to get back up to temperature. These fix that problem.

  • Soldering iron tips - Speaking of tips, here’s some tips. These are the ones I picked up for the station at work and they work well. Why get more tips when you already have one on the iron you get? Well, different tips work better for different repairs.

  • Solder - It’s kind of hard to solder without the solder. I’ll be honest, I know there’s debate out there about what solder is the best, but I’m not educated enough on such things to make the case either way, so I just go with this stuff. It hasn’t given me any problems yet.

  • Flux - There are a lot of different ways to apply flux when soldering, but I personally prefer the syringe method. It helps me get just the right amount right where I need it.

  • Solder sucker - These are great for removing globs of solder from joints. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but when I have a passthrough joint for a capacitor or something like that, I’ll use this to remove the solder first, then use the braid to get whatever is left.

  • Solder Braid - Speaking of solder braid, you need this to absorb the solder as you’re doing repairs. Helpful hint that I didn’t think about at first: hold it back farther away from where you are working or use tweezers to hold the braid while removing the solder. It gets hot and can burn your fingers!

  • Helping hands - At first I didn’t get these because I didn’t want to spend the money. After my first project I spent the money. These things are great and help keep the board or cable your working on steady while you work. The next item is the one I bought, but this is an affordable option if you’re just starting out or don’t need the flashy one.

  • Helping hands with light and magnifier - I opted for this particular pair for the 10x magnifier and the ring light build into it. I have an eye condition where I’m legally blind in one eye so having good lighting and not having to strain my good eye is very important. It’s also nice because the USB controller allows you to change the temperature of the light which also helps with eye strain.
    

• Power supply tester - I haven’t picked this up for myself yet, but I will be getting one sooner or later. I think it’s important for any retro tech kit to have a way to test old (and sometimes new) PSUs before powering them on to make sure nothing gets broken. If it comes back reporting problems, and you know what you’re doing, you can open it up and check for bulging capacitors and such. Realistically though, it’s better to just replace it all together.
  

• Multimeter - Speaking of not electrocuting yourself, a multimeter is something that I think every household should have. I picked up my first one a few months back and have used it for testing outlets around the house, testing my car battery, testing power supplies, motherboard traces, etc. My current one is a cheap endcap item from Harbor Freight, but I want to get a better one. Obviously Fluke makes some of the best, but I don’t want to shell out $50 or more for a multimeter, so I’ll probably pick up this one.

Restoration Supplies

Cleaning Supplies

Any restoration project requires cleaning, whether it’s an old Power Mac, an old ThinkPad, a SNES, or anything else. I mean, you don’t have to clean them, but why wouldn’t you want to get rid of those years of dirt, dust, and grime? Below are a few things to have on hand to get your new-to-you tech looking as new as possible.

• 91% Isopropyl Alcohol - As I’ve mentioned in other articles, you want to clean your electronic components with isopropyl alcohol because it’s non-conductive and it dries quickly. Most people have a bottle of 75% IPA for general use, but the higher the percent the lower the water content. To me, this makes 91% more ideal for working with computers and the like.

• Cotton Swabs - Cotton swabs are great for cleaning more detailed parts of your computer, console, or cartridge.
  

• Toothbrush - When it comes to cleaning the actual PCB of any piece of tech, cotton swabs with IPA can be used on the open areas, exposed solder joints will just rip the cotton off and get it stuck on the points that get hot. So for PCB cleaning a soft bristle toothbrush is the perfect tool for the job. It’s also great for getting harder-to-clean grime off of plastics when the cotton swab just can’t get it.
  

• Disinfecting Wipes - When it comes to wiping down cases and shells, I find that disinfecting wipes work well enough. There may be other things that work better, but I use these.
  

• Magic Eraser Sponge - Now for the really tough things like permanent marker, you can use the dry erase marker trick, but if that doesn’t work, you may need something a bit more hardcore. For those things I go with a magic eraser. See my article on cleaning my IBM 6548-01N CRT monitor for an example.
  

• Screen cleaner - It’s screen cleaner. I think we all know what it’s for. There’s plenty of options, but I’ve used this brand for years and have never complained about it.

Other Restoration Items

Restoring old tech requires more than just cleaning it up. It includes making sure it works as it should, and sometimes even undoing the effects of aging and oxidation.

• Game Bit Drivers - These little guys are a godsend if you are getting into retro gaming. I’ve mentioned previously in my article on replacing the save batteries on my Game Boy games that older games from the 80’s and 90’s stored save files in a chip powered by a CR2025 coin cell battery. To open them, you need a game bit screwdriver.

• Game cartridge save battery - These are the save batteries I used in that article as well. The package even comes with two game bits if you need those and have a compatible driver to put them in.

• 12% Hydrogen Peroxide - Many computer cases, keyboards, mice, and game consoles from the 1980’s and 1990’s came in a boring (yet a little charming) beige. Unfortunately, many beige and grey plastics from that era were manufactured with a flame retardant chemical that when oxidizes causes the plastic to turn this really nasty shade of yellow. There are different ways to reverse this process using things like hair creams and the like, but one of the best methods out there involves using hydrogen peroxide. Most household bottles are the 3% formula. That will work, it’ll just take a lot longer. Using 12% under UV light (i.e. sunlight) can restore a yellowed case in a day or two.
  

• UV lights - Sometimes the sun isn’t out for a while. Sometimes we can’t or just don’t want to leave our stuff outside in the sunlight. If that’s you, you can use a UV (black) light with the peroxide to achieve the goal inside. I’ve seen people use these lights sitting on top of holes cut into the lid of a plastic bin filled with peroxide with good results.
  

• UV light strand - Other people I’ve seen will use a clear plastic bin with the peroxide, then wrap this kind of LED strand around it before wrapping the whole thing in aluminum foil. Results were about the same, but I feel like this would offer better results on all sides simultaneously.

Hardware Upgrades

• Solid State Drives - One of the best things you can do to breathe new life into your vintage computers is upgrade it’s memory and storage options. I won’t bother linking to any RAM because that’s unique to each machine, but just replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive can bring your system’s performance to a whole other level. These Samsung SATA SSDs are really quite good. I’ve been using a 500 GB drive in my 2012 MacBook Pro for years now and it’s been fantastic!
  

• Compact Flash to IDE Adapters - If your machine is old enough it likely has an old IDE (PATA) hard drive. If it hasn’t failed yet, it’s only a matter of time before it does. You have a few options when it comes to hard drive upgrades, but one of the most popular for vintage computing enthusiasts is the move to Compact Flash cards. The reason these are favored for older systems, is because the CF pin out is the same (if memory serves) as that of the IDE bus. They just work. The downside: they’re a lot more expensive than something like an SD card.

  • 2.5 inch adapters - These adapters will allow you to mount your CF “drive” internally in any PC case or most laptops.

  • Internal adapter - These are great for desktops because it’ll allow you to easily swap out cards for different systems, much like what I described with the dock above.

  • Compact Flash Cards - CF cards are more expensive per byte than an SD card, but thankfully with older systems you need far fewer of them.
    

• SD Cards - SD cards are a very versatile thing to have around. Obviously they’re great for use with digital cameras, phones, game consoles, etc. but you can also format them to be used with adapters allowing them to be used as cheap flash hard drives. Single board computers like the Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi use them, and with an IDE or SATA adapter, you can use them with any other operating system.

  • IDE to SD adapter - As mentioned above, these adapters can be used to upgrade old machines, but your results may vary.

  • SATA to SD adapter - I’ve not really had any issues with these types of adapters, though performance is not as good as something like a real SSD.
    

• Tarkan iFlash ZIF to SD adapter - If you have an old iPod (Classic) or you are getting in on the scene, you’ll want to upgrade the hard drive to the iFlash. iPods used these tiny 1/8 inch ZIF hard drives. At the time, they were revolutionary, but because of their mechanical nature they are prone to failure. The iFlash allows you to replace it with up to 4 SD cards and it works wonderfully. It’s how I upgraded my 5th generation iPod Video.

Power

• 1/2 AA RAM batteries - These little batteries were found in a number of vintage computers from the 90’s, especially in Apple computers like the Power Mac G3 and G4 line where it was used for the systems PRAM. These batteries are prone to leaking their acidic contents and ruining motherboards. Remove and replace the old ones ASAP.
  

• Desktop CMOS batteries - More modern machines (meaning circa 2000 and newer or so) moved away from the larger batteries to CR2032 coin cell battery. These are easy to swap out.
  

• Laptop CMOS batteries - Laptop motherboards sometimes use the same CR2032 coin cell as their desktop counterparts, but most will use the variant with a 2 pin connector.
  

• Game Cartridge save batteries - These are the batteries that I picked up for the Game Boy cartridge restoration article I mentioned earlier. It comes with comes with 12 CR2025 tabbed coin cells and also includes game bit driver bits, though they are bigger than what will fit in the screwdriver from the kit listed above.

I hope you find this list helpful and are able to use it to get started down the road to repairing and restoring your retro and vintage tech.

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