I purchase a Macintosh Classic 2 in an original box but the box had been invaded by a mouse that left droppings in the box and some sun flower seeds.

But usually, just dust and dirt and sticky mystery stuff like gum or candy residue.

What I really hate is handling old motherboards, and PC Cards with shape points from soldered components.
I don’t like to poke or cut myself with these components.

Or rusty PC cases and cheap sheet metal cases.
So I usually purchase only Aluminum cases or higher quality NEW ATX cases that don’t have shape edges.

I have gotten cut by cases and heatsinks many times, but I believe the most disgusting PC I dealt with was a socket 478 PC I got from the thrift store. When I opened the case, it was full of spiderwebs, and on the bottom of it, there was a huge mouse nest, and they had kindly left their droppings there for me to clean out. It wasn't a fun time. I think I got really bad allergies after I pulled all the stuff out of the case. To this day, I haven't really fully cleaned it out, and i'm pretty sure there might still be some nest material in the case, and I use that PC daily.

I have not had many bad experiences like that, but I have dealt with many electronics with rust, such as my older step brother's Sega Master System, which had been sitting outside in the rain for at least 20 years. The RF shield and plastic case and motherboard had rust all over it. There's still a fair bit of rust on it, but I was able to get it to work, and it still works today. Didn't have to replace anything at all. I also bought a Dell once that had a lot of rust on it, but it still works. Besides that though, I haven't had many negative experiences with disease in my PC's

PARKE wrote:

An empty wallet.

🤣 🤣

Empty wallet as well, however, I am getting better with my budget currently and I save my money for new car parts for my car.

Another nasty caught, I'm posting it on the behalf of my friend...

So he had this VX S7 system (which he handed me... Can't complain, it still boots, but it is very iffy sometimes), he decided to tear it apart to give it a good clean, and this is where things went south, first of all, he stumbled on some kind of dead nopes bug carcasses ? No big deal yet...

But after trying to dust it, well, he uncovered some kind of foul-smelling dust (it had a very unusual smell, I cannot describe it) of course he blew it all over the room by mistake, cue in unbreathable atmosphere, sneezing and coughing like there is no tomorrow... It was utter chaos.

And I'd probably bet there was a good and hefty quantity inside (when I got the tower, I had also some of the powder fall right in my room but the vacuum cleaner took care of that...), I don't know what it was but sure it smelled really bad.

And in that tower, when I got to cleaning and lubricating the fan's bearings, there was a crap ton of this same dust inside, I bet it was some sort of extinguisher powder (I had a BC powder extinguisher leak one day, it smelled just like the same powder that I found inside of the tower).

Another one I caught this time from a chipset heatsink, a nice scar trying to put it back (you thought Socket 7 heatsinks were that bad to remove? There is worse, always worse than the absolute worst) it has since healed (that happened 3-5 years ago?) not to mention it was probably sharper than AT case edges ("Death by thousand cuts")

Massive box full of old HDDs and floppy drives, with some random useless ISA cards (MPEG cards, serial cards, modems), peppered with a metric ████ton of rat ████, from being in a garage for decades.

Vynix wrote:

And in that tower, when I got to cleaning and lubricating the fan's bearings, there was a crap ton of this same dust inside

That is one vintage component I have zero love for. I've got no patience for old, smelly, dusty, noisy fans -- they go straight to the garbage can, usually without so much as a test run.

Vynix wrote:

not to mention it was probably sharper than AT case edges ("Death by thousand cuts")

The computer store I used to work for had a nick-name for cheap cases: Chinese Death Metal. I'm not sure if that was really accurate though. I think a lot of those old generic cases were made in Singapore. So maybe Malaysian Death Metal. 😀