I LOVE taking apart electronics, old and new. They feel a lot like puzzles and it helps me to familiarize myself with the different components and such so I understand and get closer to my consoles.
One time I picked apart my laptop because it overheated too often. The thing was SO caked with dust and dirt inside. The fan alone looked almost like one of those filters in a vacuum cleaner with all the dust and hair in it. After that, I always make a point to open up any used consoles and wipe off dirt and blast it out with compressed air. I still need a screwdriver for my n64 and gamecube. Those are still pretty dirty.
Last year I bought a nice looking white gba off of eBay. While the picture looked good enough, getting it in my hands, I saw that the thing was almost orange and many of the buttons stuck down. It weirds me out how people just don't take care of their things often. Well after opening it and scrubbing it down, the white shell hurt my eyes with how vibrant it was. Like wow what a pearly beaut she was gunked inside some dirty barnacled oyster.
I just look at it like any other hobby, it requires maintenance, I taught myself how to solder, you can fix a lot of old machines just by soldering loose connections back together.
This. Its amazing how spending just ten minutes on something can make it work like new. One time when I was still new to soldering, the cable latch to my 3ds broke a contact wire. So I opened it up and tried to put in another one. I ended up melting apart 5 replacement latches and my 3ds still isn't fixed to this day.