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Offline classicsamus87Topic starter

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preserve electronic devices
« on: October 24, 2020, 07:15:26 pm »

I have electronic handheld console devices and video game cartridges, what tips to preserve these devices?
 

Offline Bud

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2020, 08:31:52 pm »
Preserve while still using them occasionally or preserve in long term storage?
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Offline classicsamus87Topic starter

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2020, 09:27:09 pm »
preserve in long term storage
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2020, 10:00:30 pm »
I'd say to try and keep moisture away as much as possible. But some parts (like electrolytics) will dry out anyway so those will need replacing. Having full schematics and digital copies of every programmable device will also help.
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2020, 10:34:00 pm »
The ideal would be to seal them up in a bag with dry nitrogen. But since most of us don't have access to pure nitrogen, dry air is the next best.
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Online CatalinaWOW

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #5 on: October 24, 2020, 11:18:03 pm »
Dry and constant temperature, preferably a relatively low constant temperature like 10C would be ideal.  But truly dry requires a hermetic package which is hard.  If the package is not hermetic moisture will diffuse in regardless of the initial fill, and surprisingly quickly.  Use of desiccant can grab the water as it comes in and delay the inevitable.  If you know the leak rate of your container you can calculate the amount of desiccant needed for a given storage interval.  If you don't know the leak rate the answer is to put lots of desiccant in and use a kind that changes color when it saturates.  You then need to look periodically and change the desiccant as required.  An initial fill with nitrogen can help with removing moisture absorbed into the game surfaces, but does little or nothing to keep water out long term.

Having said all that, storing these things in the closet of a climate controlled living space has kept these things in good shape for two or three decades as long as the climate is not too damp.  If your long storage is an unheated garage or warehouse you can probably get fairly good results packing it like a careful shipper would.  Inner polybag taped carefully closed.  Put another bag around the inner one in a belt and suspenders approach.  Then place this package in an outer box that is ten or so centimeters bigger in each dimension than the inner package and fill the space between with plastic peanuts, foam, bubble wrap or other insulation.  This will keep the game box temperature relatively constant (at least minimize diurnal variations) and avoid condensation on game surfaces.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #6 on: October 24, 2020, 11:24:21 pm »
The ideal would be to seal them up in a bag with dry nitrogen. But since most of us don't have access to pure nitrogen, dry air is the next best.
Many of us have a vacuum sealer in the kitchen, which will get a lot of the air out, and corrosion is then limited to what the oxygen inside the device can do. However, things like plastics may not need atmospheric oxygen to degrade.
 

Offline helius

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #7 on: October 24, 2020, 11:31:06 pm »
The ideal would be to seal them up in a bag with dry nitrogen. But since most of us don't have access to pure nitrogen, dry air is the next best.
Cans of inert gas (argon) are cheaply available for preserving oil paints and other materials degraded by oxygen. The trick is how to inject the gas, displacing air, and seal it in quickly. A paint can with a lid is straightforward, but an electronic device in a bag is not.
Furthermore most bags are not good vapor barriers. Specially treated mylar is a vapor barrier, but only when it is heat-sealed.

Bags infused with corrosion inhibitors are also available and would be most effective for preventing (moisture-caused) corrosion. But sealing up the device will actually make leakage-caused corrosion (from batteries, for example) more severe as there will be no atmospheric CO2 to neutralize them.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2020, 11:32:46 pm by helius »
 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #8 on: October 24, 2020, 11:58:22 pm »
If used, Make sure that all batteries are removed. Rechargeable or not.
 
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Offline classicsamus87Topic starter

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #9 on: October 25, 2020, 12:20:01 am »

I with some 0.12mm ziplock bags and put silica gel inside these bags but the moisture gradually gets into the bag and the sachets become saturated, I need a bag on aliexpress 100% airtight so as not to get moisture but it is very difficult to find
 

Offline coppercone2

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #10 on: October 25, 2020, 02:30:00 am »
put deoxit on the terminals and put it in a box and forget about it. Moisture proof box with silica gel is as far as I would ever go.
 

Offline ConKbot

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #11 on: October 25, 2020, 05:54:59 am »
If you're going as far as adding silica gel packets, you can also add hand-warmers as an oxygen absorber. They are iron powder, salt, and vermiculite, so in a dry environment, shouldnt be emitting anything nasty. That will give you a dry, reduced oxygen environment with readily available products, without having to deal with trying to get a good gas purge, or handling a gas cylinder.
 

Offline TerraHertz

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #12 on: October 25, 2020, 11:42:04 am »
Entropy comes in many forms.

Dust - Looks bad, can also be corrosive.
Moisture - corrosion.
Bugs - they chew, pee and poop, plus leave carcasses. All destructive, often corrosive. Often they really like making homes in electronics.
  Large, thick ziplock plastic bags and sealed containers are good against these. Especially if moisture absorbing packs included.
  In Oz stores Coles & Woolies) there's a brand 'Hercules' with a large size 27 x 33 cm and double ziplock. Packs of 40. I use a lot of these, especially to preserve old manuals.

Light - discolors plastics, causes some materials to decay. Store in cupboards, boxes, etc.
    Some plastics go brown with age, due to included Bromine flame retardants. This can be reversed; look up 'retrobright'.
Air - oxidation, especially of contacts made of anything but gold.
   Nothing you can do about this, unless you can arrange long term storage in dry nitrogen or argon. Difficult.
Paper:
  Embrittlement and yellowing of cheap acid paper. Not much can be done to stop this.
  Mildew - keep as dry as possible, stable cool temp. Bagged.
  Silverfish - Bagged or boxed, plus sprinkle camphor flakes in the containers.

Batteries - the _worst_ destroyers of old electronics. Especially check for built-in nicads and other small soldered-in batteries.
  All batteries MUST be removed from anything to be stored long term.
  Leaking nicads especially can irreparably destroy all electronics within a large radius.

Tin whiskers - anything tin plated (with no lead alloyed in) will grow microscopic 'whiskers' of tin, that can short out and damage electronics. Slow but deadly. Inspect before powering, brush off. If on the inside of components - tough luck.

Depolymerization. Rubber parts, feet, and 'grippy' surface coatings turning to sticky liquid gunk, plastics going brittle, etc. VERY hard to remove. The only defense is to check items now and then, and completely remove any rubber parts showing signs of going tacky.

Rubber belts and rollers. You're going to have to replace them, repeatedly in the long term. Find a supplier.

Urethane foam. Commonly used as air filters, sound absorbing and anti-vibration pads. This stuff disintegrates into tacky, corrosive gunk that gets all through equipment. Remove on sight, clean all residue.
Where used in storage boxes to cushion expensive, delicate test gear, replace ASAP with non-decaying foam such as polyethylene. Nothing worse than opening such a box to find some priceless precision metal device corroded to hell.

Flexible plastics losing their volatile plasticiser substances and going brittle.
Cables especially. Anything where thin plastic is used as a hinge.

Hard plastics kept under tension. Will always crack eventually, even if glass fibre reinforced. Self tapping screws in plastic mounting posts for example. Also plastic clips used to retain clip-on covers.

Plasticiser compounds diffusing out of one substance, and damaging nearby incompatible substances. For eg, flexible PVC cables pressed against some kinds of hard molded plastics, will 'melt' indents into the plastic.
Also with toner-based photocopies in PVC binders, the PVC plasticisers will make the toner melt and adhere to facing pages and the binder.

Grease, on moving parts. Often hardens with age. Eg old floppy disk drive mechanisms, pot shafts, etc.
  Can be very difficult to remove once it's really hard. Also may be corrosive.
  Remove with IPA, acetone or other solvents. Experiment. Disassembly may be required. Sometimes only mechanical scraping works.
  Replace with non-hardening Lithium soap or synthetic grease types. Sometimes the right viscosity matters.

Some component types are just plain doomed.
  Carbon composition resistors all drift high with age, going out of tolerance. Faster if operating hot.
  Filament light bulbs (eg indicators, spinner knob sensors, etc) just plain always fail.
  Membrane keys - don't have long lives.
  Silicone rubber pad keys - don't get oils on these. Oil diffuses through the rubber, gets into the conductive pad underneath, and makes it non-conductive. Can sometimes be restored by soaking in solvents.
  LEDs fade with age.
  RIFA mains-rated caps - the outer encapsulation shrinks and cracks, lets moisture into the plastic metalised film, under voltage the film breaks down and arcs. Result - a lot of very stinky, gunky smoke that condenses on surrounding parts and is hell to clean off.
  Remove and replace all RIFA mains caps on sight.
  Electrolytic caps. They all fail eventually. Only the duration varies. For cheap or underrated ones, a few years. Good ones not stressed, can last decades.
  Wet foil tantalum caps with non-ceramic seals - all fail eventually.
  Memory devices using charge retention in cells. eg EPROMS, flash memory... data retention time is not forever, but varies a lot between device types and manufacture. All should be read out and archived if at all possible.
  One-time programmable devices - gate arrays, etc. Especially fuse link types. They can randomly fail. But many are not readable, or have read protection enabled. Read if possible, or try to obtain source code, spare blanks and suitable programming device. But accept that devices using a lot of custom programmed devices are going to die unrepairable eventually.
  Non-volatile memory of the static RAM plus encapsulated battery kind, Dallas, etc - arrgh. Guaranteed fail in a decade or two. There are hacks online for cutting down into these and attaching new external battery. Good luck. Fortunately their contents can usually be read out in a device programmer.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2020, 12:41:47 pm by TerraHertz »
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Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #13 on: October 25, 2020, 02:33:27 pm »
Thanks for your very detailed explanation.

I have experienced depolimerization.  It was a big mystery to me until you explained it above.
 

Online CatalinaWOW

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #14 on: October 25, 2020, 02:34:12 pm »
Entropy comes in many forms.

Dust - Looks bad, can also be corrosive.
Moisture - corrosion.
Bugs - they chew, pee and poop, plus leave carcasses. All destructive, often corrosive. Often they really like making homes in electronics.
  Large, thick ziplock plastic bags and sealed containers are good against these. Especially if moisture absorbing packs included.
  In Oz stores Coles & Woolies) there's a brand 'Hercules' with a large size 27 x 33 cm and double ziplock. Packs of 40. I use a lot of these, especially to preserve old manuals.

Light - discolors plastics, causes some materials to decay. Store in cupboards, boxes, etc.
Air - oxidation, especially of contacts made of anything but gold.
   Nothing you can do about this, unless you can arrange long term storage in dry nitrogen or argon. Difficult.
Paper:
  Embrittlement and yellowing of cheap acid paper. Not much can be done to stop this.
  Mildew - keep as dry as possible, stable cool temp. Bagged.
  Silverfish - Bagged or boxed, plus sprinkle camphor flakes in the containers.

Batteries - the _worst_ destroyers of old electronics. Especially check for built-in nicads and other small soldered-in batteries.
  All batteries MUST be removed from anything to be stored long term.
  Leaking nicads especially can irreparably destroy all electronics within a large radius.

Tin whiskers - anything tin plated (with no lead alloyed in) will grow microscopic 'whiskers' of tin, that can short out and damage electronics. Slow but deadly. Inspect before powering, brush off. If on the inside of components - tough luck.

Depolymerization. Rubber parts, feet, and 'grippy' surface coatings turning to sticky liquid gunk, plastics going brittle, etc. VERY hard to remove. The only defense is to check items now and then, and completely remove any rubber parts showing signs of going tacky.

Rubber belts and rollers. You're going to have to replace them, repeatedly in the long term. Find a supplier.

Urethane foam. Commonly used as air filters, sound absorbing and anti-vibration pads. This stuff disintegrates into tacky, corrosive gunk that gets all through equipment. Remove on sight, clean all residue.
Where used in storage boxes to cushion expensive, delicate test gear, replace ASAP with non-decaying foam such as polyethylene. Nothing worse than opening such a box to find some priceless precision metal device corroded to hell.

Flexible plastics losing their volatile plasticiser substances and going brittle.
Cables especially. Anything where thin plastic is used as a hinge.

Hard plastics kept under tension. Will always crack eventually, even if glass fibre reinforced. Self tapping screws in plastic mounting posts for example. Also plastic clips used to retain clip-on covers.

Plasticiser compounds diffusing out of one substance, and damaging nearby incompatible substances. For eg, flexible PVC cables pressed against some kinds of hard molded plastics, will 'melt' indents into the plastic.
Also with toner-based photocopies in PVC binders, the PVC plasticisers will make the toner melt and adhere to facing pages and the binder.

Grease, on moving parts. Often hardens with age. Eg old floppy disk drive mechanisms, pot shafts, etc.
  Can be very difficult to remove once it's really hard. Also may be corrosive.
  Remove with IPA, acetone or other solvents. Experiment. Disassembly may be required. Sometimes only mechanical scraping works.
  Replace with non-hardening Lithium soap or synthetic grease types. Sometimes the right viscosity matters.

Some component types are just plain doomed.
  Carbon composition resistors all drift high with age, going out of tolerance. Faster if operating hot.
  Filament light bulbs (eg indicators, spinner knob sensors, etc) just plain always fail.
  Membrane keys - don't have long lives.
  Silicone rubber pad keys - don't get oils on these. Oil diffuses through the rubber, gets into the conductive pad underneath, and makes it non-conductive. Can sometimes be restored by soaking in solvents.
  LEDs fade with age.
  RIFA mains-rated caps - the outer encapsulation shrinks and cracks, lets moisture into the plastic metalised film, under voltage the film breaks down and arcs. Result - a lot of very stinky, gunky smoke that condenses on surrounding parts and is hell to clean off.
  Remove and replace all RIFA mains caps on sight.
  Electrolytic caps. They all fail eventually. Only the duration varies. For cheap or underrated ones, a few years. Good ones not stressed, can last decades.
  Wet foil tantalum caps with non-ceramic seals - all fail eventually.
  Memory devices using charge retention in cells. eg EPROMS, flash memory... data retention time is not forever, but varies a lot between device types and manufacture. All should be read out and archived if at all possible.
  One-time programmable devices - gate arrays, etc. Especially fuse link types. They can randomly fail. But many are not readable, or have read protection enabled. Read if possible, or try to obtain source code, spare blanks and suitable programming device. But accept that devices using a lot of custom programmed devices are going to die unrepairable eventually.
  Non-volatile memory of the static RAM plus encapsulated battery kind, Dallas, etc - arrgh. Guaranteed fail in a decade or two. There are hacks online for cutting down into these and attaching new external battery. Good luck. Fortunately their contents can usually be read out in a device programmer.


Great summary.  Good advice for anyone truly serious about long term preservation.
 

Offline Bud

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #15 on: October 25, 2020, 03:41:55 pm »
Keep cables separate from devices, do not wrap around plastic cases , as was mentioned above they may cause plastic to melt chemically if they touch it for prolonged time.
Store stuff in a dark storage to reduce plastic yellowing.
I'd still not store stuff for years hermetically sealed, i'd let it vent once a year at least, things may get stinky.
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Offline DrG

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #16 on: October 25, 2020, 04:19:40 pm »
Keep cables separate from devices, do not wrap around plastic cases , as was mentioned above they may cause plastic to melt chemically if they touch it for prolonged time.

While I have my doubts as to the origination of the thread (and expect some plastic bag advert to show up at some time), there is some good information here and I wanted to show that the point quoted is accurate.



No, I did not use it as a holder for a soldering iron...I only wrapped a big heavy power cord around it and stored it that way for ~ 30-35 years. If seeing is believing, you can rest assured that the quoted tip can be believed.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #17 on: October 25, 2020, 04:52:35 pm »
put them in a stainless steel box, weld it shut and encase that in a few cubic meters of concrete. bury 6ft deep. together with all other 'old junk'.
Better tip : recycle them.

Sorry, couldn't resist. I don't understand this concept of wanting to keep old obsolete stuff. if i look in my neighbourhood many people have an old carcass of an old 69 chevy pickup truck or a 1953 cheville special that is rusted out , broken windows, motor completely bust. but they hang on to it for sentimental values and sit next to it, beer in hand , dreaming of restoring it.. then they pass away and the descendants have to deal with the cleanup. Their garage is full of old clothes that don't fit, old tv's they keep for .. well what ?
Give it up. it has had its life. let it go.
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Any comments, or points of view expressed, are my own and not endorsed , induced or compensated by my employer(s).
 
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Offline Syntax Error

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #18 on: October 25, 2020, 09:52:46 pm »
Depolimerization  >:( Welcome to the tacky world of cassette deck drive belts.

In martime atmospheres, salt crystals can spontaneously grow and pit metal surfaces. Gadgets confined to the man shed will culture mold as fungal spores thrive on damp dust and other other organic coatings. Biology is what does for camera lenses and antique cellulose films. Termites love reverse engineering wooden wireless cases, and man sheds. Animal glues go nasty and might be harbouring the next pandemic. Random screwdriver experts in man sheds can cause irreparable damage to delicate electrical and mechanical parts. Resin bonded PCBs seem to dry out, becoming brittle and delaminate the copper tracks. Polystyrene packaging can yellow the plastic of your beloved antique games machine. Bakelite is technically a hazardous material (phenol-formaldehyde), and should be marked as such to comply with future health and safety hysteria. Really, other than making everything from quartz and gold,  there's not a lot of our stuff that's future proof :-BROKE
 
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Offline bob91343

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #19 on: October 25, 2020, 10:35:30 pm »
One solution that has worked for me, which I didn't see mentioned here, is to inspect and exercise the item periodically.  Electronic 'cobwebs' invade unused equipment eventually.  Chemical migration, general corrosion, outgassing, and other inevitable evils can be interrupted in their progress if the equipment is taken out of storage periodically and used for a while, brought up to operating temperature, and then after cooling stored again.

One benefit of this approach is that if a problem appears it can be dealt with before it progresses to the point of permanent damage.
 
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Offline classicsamus87Topic starter

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #20 on: October 28, 2020, 11:51:37 am »
antistatic bag is considered a hermetic bag that does not let moisture enter it? I ask this because I bought units of ziplock bag and in all the moisture ends up getting in and this compromises the preservation of electronic devices

ziplock has 0.012mm thickness
 

Offline coppice

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #21 on: October 28, 2020, 01:30:36 pm »
antistatic bag is considered a hermetic bag that does not let moisture enter it? I ask this because I bought units of ziplock bag and in all the moisture ends up getting in and this compromises the preservation of electronic devices

ziplock has 0.012mm thickness
It depends what kind of antistatic bag you mean. The pink ones offer very limited moisture protection. The shiny dark grey ones can keep moisture out for years. I'm not sure about a zip lock one. I don't know how well the zip itself seals. However, the dark grey ones, heat sealed, work very well. Its not really a matter of the thickness of the plastic. Its the type. The good heat sealed vacuum packing bags are usually a laminate of at least two plastics - one does the heat sealing well (and is food safe, if the bags were made for that use), and one is a really effective moisture barrier.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2020, 01:32:32 pm by coppice »
 

Offline classicsamus87Topic starter

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #22 on: October 28, 2020, 03:04:43 pm »
could you show me good aliexpress bags to store electronics and protect completely from moisture? if you have a zip it's better I don't have a vacuum machine I always thought about thickness
 

Offline Tomorokoshi

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #23 on: October 28, 2020, 03:24:05 pm »
For general care of both equipment and property I run dehumidifiers on timers. Now that it's getting drier because of winter I'm setting the timers back from maybe 4 hours/day to 2 hours/day.
 

Offline DrG

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Re: preserve electronic devices
« Reply #24 on: October 28, 2020, 05:02:35 pm »
could you show me good aliexpress bags to store electronics and protect completely from moisture? if you have a zip it's better I don't have a vacuum machine I always thought about thickness

I have given this matter a great deal of thought and have concluded that .....You gotta put the Lime in the Coconut...there is no choice in this matter. If you want to preserve ANYTHING...you must put the lime in the coconut, dammit!




https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/help-buy-ziplock-aliexpress-for-protect-my-electronics.159679/
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/question-ziplock-silica-gel-humidity.159718/
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/questions-preserve-store-ssd-many-years.159713/
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/preserve-electronic-devices.160120/

and here...and other places.... ad nauseam.

*sigh* (I know I should be a better person but I'm really not).


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