Brown gunk on XL family equipment.

[OldAtarian]

Have you ever encountered this? You pick up an 800XL, 1050, or 1010, and it arrives all covered with dirty brown gunk. It's not cigarette smoke gunk, or spilled coffee gunk, just dirty gunk. It seems most of the XL stuff I get lately is plagued with the stuff.

[Roydea6]

No! I have never seen this type of Atari Equipment. Must be regional.

 

 

Try looking through the Retro Brite thread that is pinned to this Forum.

 

 

 

[Bryan]

Can you describe it further? Does it clean off?

[R.Cade]

I see some where the equipment has been

stacked for years and the rubber feet have started to disolve...

[OldAtarian]

Can you describe it further? Does it clean off?

 

Yeah, it cleans off easy enough with a little dish washing liquid solution, it's just the idea that almost every piece of equipment I get lately is encrusted with it. It's not the yellowing from age, either, because most of the time it cleans up close to the original white or with just slight yellowing. It also gets built up on the chrome, like on the tops of the function keys where the keys are all brown except for round spots in the middle where they were repeatedly pressed down. Seeing how dirty they are on the outside makes me afraid to open them up to clean the inside sometimes.

[Rybags]

The texturing on the white parts of XL gear means that grimy finger marks and general stains will sit there protected by the hilly bits, so you have to actually use a chemical attack to clean them properly.

[sloopy]

its from people who dont wash their hands... my in-laws tv remote gets it... which is odd, cause our remote doesnt and 4 of our kids use it ( 7, 8, 12, 13), and ours doesnt get all gunked up...

 

sloopy.

[+save2600]

I've seen that phenomenon on plenty of Atari computing gear throughout all the years, but never on Commodore or TI stuff for some strange reason.

 

"Power without the price" means you attract a certain special, and quite often, greasy kind of clientele. lmao

[Bryan]

I've seen that phenomenon on plenty of Atari computing gear throughout all the years, but never on Commodore or TI stuff for some strange reason.

 

"Power without the price" means you attract a certain special, and quite often, greasy kind of clientele. lmao

Power without the Hygiene?

[Rybags]

Many C64 and peripherals are brownish anyway so gunk doesn't show up, plus they're less textured.

 

Amiga 500s get dirty really easily.

 

Beige box PCs are probably the worst - they turn brownish regardless of how dirty the handlers are.

[OldAtarian]

I've seen that phenomenon on plenty of Atari computing gear throughout all the years, but never on Commodore or TI stuff for some strange reason.

 

"Power without the price" means you attract a certain special, and quite often, greasy kind of clientele. lmao

 

Considering the Commodore 64 was released at $595 months before Atari announced the 1200XL at $899, I wouldn't exactly say the honor of Power Without the Price goes to Atari,at least not where the 8 bits were concerned. The ST, yes, but the 8 bits were behind the pricing curve for most of their existence, reacting to Commodores price drops but never being in a position where they had the pricing power. Ironically, it was Jack Tramiels price war with T.I. that basically caused the Atari 8 bit line, that he would later buy, to flounder. Talk about having something come back to bite you on the butt later. Karma can really suck sometimes.

Edited November 27, 2010 by OldAtarian

[+save2600]

Talk about having something come back to bite you on the butt later. Karma can really suck sometimes.

Indeed!

 

 

 

 

[OldAtarian]

Talk about having something come back to bite you on the butt later. Karma can really suck sometimes.

Indeed!

 

 

And even after all the cost reduction that went into the XE's, they still couldn't compete with the C64/128. The Commodores just had too big of a user base by then and it was all because of Jack Tramiel and his price war. He had to compete against the leviathan that he created. C64's would sell for over 2 more years after Atari dropped support for the XE, right up to the day when Commodore went under.

Edited November 27, 2010 by OldAtarian

[Bryan]

Considering the Commodore 64 was released at $595 months before Atari announced the 1200XL at $899, I wouldn't exactly say the honor of Power Without the Price goes to Atari,at least not where the 8 bits were concerned.

 

Well that was Jack's slogan, so it didn't really apply to anything before the ST/XE.

 

Yeah, nobody saw the 64 coming and suddenly there was no profit margin on home computers. Before '82, however, you would have been hard pressed to find a more capable PC than the 800 at its price point.