Throwing away infected classic consoles

[oldgamerz]

BUMPED 4/21/2019. Since this forums staff let people bump old topics so I did.

I've had purchased a PS3 from Amazon.com in 2015 that was covered in sticky nicotine or something else or someone sold it to me for $120USD Plus shipping with dried pop/soda all over it, I eventually gave it away, but after reading each and every post on this 5 old year thread I feel bad that I never bothered to clean most of my consoles. the only one that was ever cleaned was my PS2 and I had it professionally done.

I suck because I don't know how to reassemble anything once I take it apart, I got big fingers that bend and break small parts and lost screws before, and destroyed a PS2 trying to take it apart, I never figured out how to put the
tiny power button connector chip in place back in place on one of my PS2 phats

there probably is bugs inside my game systems and games, I never checked and don't want to check because if I do I'll probably break my consoles. A PC I think I could handle that but not a console with small delicate parts, My computer gets cleaned regularly as of today but never my consoles

I live in Southern Michigan

[hoshichiri]

As a general rule, if a system works well, I don't open it. Bad idea? Probably- but so far, none of my systems have put out bugs. Even the Intellivision that was in an attic for a few decades.

My logic typically is, I'm concerned I'll do something to render the system inoperable if I poke its innards without cause. Not just by breaking something, but by messing up some weirdly balanced bit of brokenness. I had a friend who kept an old CRT for retro machines, that had gotten jostled somewhere so the picture was displayed on a tilt. My sister gave her an entertainment center shelving unit, that got jostled in transport and had a slight lean... in the exact opposite direction of the TV's tilt. Tilted TV plus slanted shelf equals level picture. I fear metaphorically fixing the shelf, only to discover the TV needed it to display right and now I have to put in a lot more work to fix that.