I had 3 1/2 of these things.

That said, I would actually love a transparent cover for my ps5.

It's crazy that so many people lost the cover to the expansion slot on the N64. You literally only had to remove it to put the expansion pack in, replace the cover, and then never touch it again.

No one can say this wouldn't be cool now. If they still offered tech like this, they would still sell well. Probably the main reason they don't, is because the tech inside is shielded and all you would see is a bunch of aluminium-covered blobs.

Some things might still be made, as prison tech

Techmoan did a piece on it a while back.
https://youtu.be/O3PfsndsihY

I did a quick eBay search and still found a bunch of radios and Tvs.

I'm sure this way of putting circuitry on display played at least some role in awakening my inner nerd. Although I never actually got into circuitry, I do remember being fascinated by this stuff not because of the aesthetic, but because it made me aware that a Gameboy or w/e was engineered out of components that we actually built, and wasn't just a magic box that converted batteries into videogame addictions.

It gave 5-year-old-me an appreciation for tech that would have otherwise taken much longer to develop.

I mean, that's basically PCs with a transparent side. I also got a transparent back for my Steam Deck.

I thought about that, but they're not the same, since all the cool PCBs are wrapped.

GPUs, for example (then vs now)

Didn't know about this. And that bloke is amazing. I love his videos.

I'm pretty sure GamersNexus did a video about how taking the wrap off in some situations actually increased performance, so I mean you'd probably be fine without it.

Really? I gotta look that up, because if this true, I'm having an unwrapping party!

What I saw was on a main channel GamersNexus video from a week or so ago, titled something to the effect of DOA: CyberPower Prebuilt, around 10-11 minutes in he's looking at the video card and mention that if the wrapping is plastic, it's an insulator and gives you somewhat worse performance because of the heat, probably not that much worse, but noticeably on benchmarks.

I don't think anyone "wanted" their stuff transparent, it was just a style choice that was only possible with increasingly huge amounts of everything being made out of plastic instead of being encased in bakelite or metal.

Out of all of these pictures, the n64 one is the best.

The n64 picture is the only picture here with any reasonably real purpose, that being, likely to show the expansion pak.

And because I lived through that era, I know how hype those things were, even though most of the time they did nothing or were actively detrimental to the performative of the n64. But, if you went to a friend's house and their n64 had that red-topped module installed, you knew that they were serious about n64 gaming.

So, that picture, out of all of these pictures, stands out, at least to me, as the only real picture, the one with a story, taken by a real person, for a real reason.