John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

What are your thoughts on this? Typically with newer electronics, I'll turn things on regardless of the temperature. But as winter approaches and the ambient temperature of my garage gets colder I am becoming wary of turning these 30 year old games on. I just have this vision of having a ton of bad solder joints every where as things heat up and cool down rapidly. Only a couple of games are being stored in the garage while they are getting worked on. Some will move into the basement, but that is in the process of getting finished so I'm trying to keep everything out of it at the moment.

Do you guys have any rules of thumb with this?

yeah .. donkey punch the machine first

As a rule, I don't do it. It scares me. And, if I bring a game in from the garage when it's super cold I let it warm up to room temperature before I turn it on.

I have done it before just to quickly test a game but I really feel uncomfortable with it. :)

Ian told me rule of thumb is don't turn them on if it's below freezing temperature, seems like a good temperature point but depending on how cold your garage gets I wouldn't turn them on a little higher than that, not really a comfortable gaming experience anyways. ;)

Good to know. I just see myself wanting to tinker a few times during the winter months in the garage but wanted to know what you guys were thinking.  I'll move the key projects inside if possible!  Final Lap is going to have to sit there for a few months though!

If you can avoid it, don't turn on any game below about 0C.
If you feel like you need to turn on a game that is below 0C, do not turn on more than one at a time. Current draw will most certainly be higher than normal.

If you have a game that uses a hard drive, you should seriously reconsider turning the game on at all until the game is warm.

While not really dangerous to turn a game on below freezing the monitor is going to be most sensitive to the cold. There is a chance the monitor will blow a cap or blow a fuse. I can't speak for all cap kits but the ones I pack and I would say most of the reputable sources are going to be using caps rated down to -40C. If you have recapped your monitor you shouldn't have any real problem turning it on.

When you do turn on a game the monitor might look really really shitty or might not sync at all. Let it warm up before you make judgement.

For those interested in why this happens.
The capacitance and often times the ESR (series resistance) of the capacitor goes down by up to 50% of the rated capacity. This means that current draw is going to be slightly higher than normal, this may stress the capacitor and cause a failure. The reduced capacitance may cause problems with filtering causing noise on the image. Reduced capacitance may change the frequency of which the sync circuit will operate at (depending on the monitor) meaning you won't get a synced image. Some games also use the resonance of the yoke coil+capacitor to set the horizontal and vertical fill on the monitor. If the capacitor is at a reduced value the game may over fill or under fill the screen until the game is up to temperature. 

when i go pickup a machine in winter i wont turn it on until it spends a night in my heated garage ;)

0 and under is a nono for old electronics [my view of course]

plus you don't wanna fire up a machine while its cold due to the fact that everything will build condensation from the machine warming up .
also , you ever notice how the sticks and buttons barely move when they are really cold?