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Comment by eddieroger | Hacker News Reader

The retro repair videos on YouTube are so quickly becoming my favorite content on there. I don't know if I just find the inside of computers neat, or it hits hard in the nostalgia, or realistically both, but it's so cool to see talented people keeping tech alive instead of letting it become trash.

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There's something very enjoyable watching people go through the debug process, cleaning stuff up and then just doing a nice neat job of fixing stuff.

Some channels I enjoy for retro computer/electronics repair:

Adrian's Digital Basement: https://www.youtube.com/c/adriansdigitalbasement

Jan Beta: https://www.youtube.com/c/JanBeta

Mark Fixes Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/c/markfixesstuff

RMC: https://www.youtube.com/c/RMCRetro (he does lots of non-repair retro stuff too, search for Trash to Treasure to see the repair stuff).

I'd like to add Noel's Retro Lab to the list: https://www.youtube.com/c/NoelsRetroLab

One nice thing he does is putting a tiny scope probe symbol on the part of the schematic diagram he's currently investigating.

I'd like to add "MyMateVince" to the list: https://www.youtube.com/c/Mymatevince

His "Trying to Fix" videos are a pleasure to watch, and mostly (not always!) deal with older tech or toys. But he'd also try to fix a dead Playstation, for instance. Or a 2010-ish Macbook.

8 bit show and tell is absolutely brilliant for any c64 fans out there ( down to assembly level ), plus a little more besides.

Mr Carlson's Lab is also excellent, restoring old radio equipment in excruciating detail. A lot of the videos are over two hours long, but it makes excellent background viewing.

Also it's always mentioned, but CuriousMarc and Ken Sherriff have some amazing restoration videos. In particular the excellent series on restoring the apollo guidance computer.

Necroware has a lot of 386 mainboard repair videos and such.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCKU5nwSWYXa3xfXGBlKyvdw

Similar here, I love restoration videos in general - specifically Baumgartner Restoration [0], who restores paintings, and anyone who repairs rusted tools or old wooden furniture.

I recently realized that this kind of video is at the intersection of two of my interests (filmmaking and crafts) so I am, in fact, preparing to launch my own channel. Stay tuned ;)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/BaumgartnerRestoration

Same, except that there's so much obviously fake content out there.....it's awful. Videos where someone pulls out something that barely looks like maybe it was a VCR at some point, and then in the next scene we're looking at a "repair" of an old VCR that had some dirt thrown on it. Very obviously two completely different devices.

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