[jentist_retol]

A word of warning: 8-Bit Guy has some interesting videos, but his restorations of vintage hardware are really damaging to the hardware and generally poor quality (even if the final result looks fine). I guess it's fine if he sticks to a 2600 or something, but some of the stuff he's done destroys rare hardware with real historical significance.

[Miraste]

Can you give an example? How are the restorations damaging?

[jentist_retol]

I guess I should have.

- He uses retrobrite frequently. This is a controversial practice (personally, I'm against it). Basically, restoring a yellowed case to a closer-to-original color. The long term effects of this process are unknown (some speculation is that it makes plastic brittle, which is bad enough already on some of this older hardware) - it's probably okay to do it to an Apple II, but maybe not rarer hardware.

- His work is shoddy - frequently, he powers on 30+ year old machines without inspecting the caps. He uses a screwdriver on metal to clear adhesive. When a component is malfunctioning, he does't have the capability to examine it with a scope - sometimes, it's just a bad joint you know?

- He runs an entertainment channel. This means he moves fast. It leads to the above shoddy work but also means that he needs a complete project for video views - 8bg will spraypaint a faded case to a new color and call it done.

- RaspberryPi conversions. Man, I hate these. Let the thing be the thing that it was and let a Pi be a Pi.

And you know, this is probably fine for commodity hardware like TRS80s and Apple IIs. And, he does a good job of cutting videos showing logical progression to make them easier to watch. But, you'll notice that he never does workstation, graphics, or other esoteric hardware - that stuff is a legitimate challenge to restore aside from cleaning goop and retrobriting the case.