" and for possibly being the only system on earth to ever house some dirty little cockroaches!"

Doubt it. Roaches LOVE warm electronics.

So, the system had buggy hardware?

The PS2 I picked up from Craiglist just had a bunch of gross looking women asking for several hundred roses each. Dunno what that's all about.

Gross. I hate, hate, hate bugs. It would have immediately gone in the trash.

First time I've actually heard about roaches in a PS2. Ugh, disgusting little things. Even though they are not as creepy as house centipedes.

@nakedscience: Whenever I get new electronics, I always see ants around them until the sweet chemical plastic smells dissipate.

I can totally understand the appeal, personally.

FTA: REMEMBER: This isn't my system! I bought this from someone on craigslist! I have a clean house and a very clean room!

Heh. You mean you did.

@nakedscience: Seconded.

German cockroaches (the ones pictured) are also known as "TV roaches" because they love to live inside TV sets and other small electronics. It's why I won't buy them used.

It's also common enough that most electronics companies void warranties in cases of infestation. Roach frass is corrosive.

I used to live in a house that had roaches really bad. When I moved out, I packed all my electronics into black plastic bags, and kept them in my car for a couple weeks. it was august, so it got really hot. Any roaches inside the electronics were cooked.

I used to work for a rent to own business (I was in college and hated every minute I worked there. Such a bad deal) and we would get computers, tvs and stereos back that were infested with roaches. Disgusting stuff. All electronics had to be fumigated upon return.

Also, when living at my Mom's house, she had a roach infestation and they were living behind my phone charger that I had left in a wall socket for several weeks. They love those warm electronics.

That is absolutely horrifying. I f'ing hate cockroaches. I would burn that PS2 in a fire, and then go back and throw it through the guy's window who sold it to me. Bleh I'm a little freaked out just thinking about the possibility of cockroaches inconspicuously living in my 360.

@Owen Yun: I'd take the house centipedes over roaches HANDS DOWN. Least with the centipedes you know you dont have ants or roaches (they eat them, they are one of those beneficial bugs that eat pests.)

But I bet you cave crickets have both beat. My wifes parents house had a real issues with those. Nasty little things that look like miniature versions of the soldier bugs from Starship Troopers.

@GuJiaXian: God, a real groaner...

Roaches are attracted to the dark and warm electronics inside and will leave all sorts of disgusting stuff on them. This situation is unfortunate but could easily happen to anyone.

I spotted this question online "Roaches are living in my electronics!! My phone, computer, printer, gamecube, you name it, there living in it :( How in the world do I get them out of there and kill them without ruining my stuff?" You are not alone.

Since the topic is roaches and bugs does anyone have any tips for getting rid of them? I am purchasing a house this summer and the two houses I am looking at were built in 1970 and both have been vacant for some time. I am planning on using some raid smoke bombs but does anyone have any other tips?

i wonder how often the microsoft service centers see this happening? I just got my 360 back from them. Although the 360 gets so hot it could cook off any roaches hidden inside.

@sir_pantsalot: Exterminator? Also, pest control places can spray a barrier around the house to help prevent future bugs from entering.

Oh god oh god I would have started hyperventilating right then and there.

@Jim Topoleski: Y'all just need to move to Texas. Here we have these translucent lizard things that move in and eat all the bugs. They kick ass.

@pythonkid: As were the electronics? A cross country trip with a keyboard in the back dash has been enough for Mr Ruthless to fry the keyboard. Twice.

@Dafrety: Me too. And that PS2 would have gone out the door, and I'd be screaming.

Oh god this is one of my fears when buying used systems since I buy a lot of systems from yard sales. I am in the northeast though so roaches aren't a huge problem here. There are probably very few houses that are infested with roaches. I guess to be safe the best thing to do would be to open the system up on the porch to make sure that you aren't letting whatever bugs are inside the system into your house. I always clean whatever I bring home from a yard sale as soon as I get it, unless its something that obviously doesn't attract bugs.

Not uncommon, back in the 90's I worked in a very large electronics repair shop in Atlanta. We used to do a lot of VCR and microwaves that were infested with roaches. Usually you could SMELL them when a customer brought them in. My supervisor was a lead tech and I laughed when I some him waving his hand over the vents..."yep, it's a roach job" he said as a VCR sat there on the bench with a complaint of not powering up.

Sure enough, removing the cover revealed literally dozens of roach carcasses, some still alive- all over the PCB's, in the transport...the culprit of the failure was one that shorted out the switching power supply when it crawled across two points on the board. So, he would use a can of RAID to get any living ones out, then clean (as best as possible) the dead ones out, replaced a fuse on the power supply board, do a bench check and on the invoice he put "thorough cleaning and re-calibration". He never had the heart to tell people they were living in a roach motel! And you would be amazed how many of these critter keepers came from affluent parts of the city like Buckhead- not Bankhead...so it wasn't the ghetto folks bringing them in, you'd be surprised at the clientele.

Microwaves that we would fix often got zapped by roaches inside when they short out the magnetron, usually the customer would know as they would be using it and hear a loud pop as one would electrocute itself when crawling across the high voltage line leading to the tube. Roach infested electronics usually have a telltale urine smell, very distinct. If you hold a suspect piece of equipment to your nose and smell pee-pee, chances are it has been a roach haven. Often times you can see the feces (looks like little brown or black specs) on the item itself, usually near the vents or openings but often opening the housing reveals the most disgusting places where roaches "relieve themselves". Sorry but just something to keep in mind when getting used electronics. Cable and satellite TV set top boxes are prime candidates: lots of vents, warm and dry, and are passed from home to home. Check them out before the cable guy leaves, he may have just dropped off some new tenants in your home!

@babyruthless: We also have tree roaches. At least they don't reproduce inside, but they're awfully hard to keep from coming in, especially for something so large.

@Applekid: You probably want to get checked at a clinic. PS2 might be one of those essteedy things I keep hearing so much about.

@sir_pantsalot: Those homes shouldn't have alot of roachs if vacant and not occupied recently especially if these were "~cleaned~". Get the pro exterminator if you are freaked about bugs before spending money on bug bombs. Vacant homes would have more issues with spiders, wasp/mud daubers and nests, etc

If it does have roaches and you want to kill them #1 think like a roach. Figure out where the warm places with food debris would be and super clean these spaces- under stove, refrigerator, under dish washer, under cabinets if accessable. Seal all wall/trim/cabinet cracks around stove,refrig/washer-dryer,dishwasher (if accessible) to cabinets and walls with caulk- who cares if you are renting spend the money and buy caulk to rid yourself of roaches. Sometimes you can get boric acid powder under the cabinet through a plumbing crack, or under the kick plate. Treat areas not accessible to kids /pets with boric acid powder. Make sure of no leaks in plumbing or refrigerator water/ice lines. Do not leave pet food out longer than your pet needs to eat it, seal all pet food up in plastic tubs. One time I did have to keep my dry non-canned food in the refrigerator for a couple of months until I killed the roaches but that was a minor blip for me.

I have moved into several apartments with mild to medium infestations along with treating a 80 year old college class studio/ hallway space (in Central Alabama- now those were BIG roaches!) and have always won agains roaches with -hyper cleanliness- and boric acid powder sometimes in spite of and sometimes combined with the ineffective commercial exterminator treatment. Unless you are living next to or over/under a garbage apartment, you can defeat roaches. Anyone who says you cannot (excepting the garbage apartment proximity) doesn't know how to be realy clean.

I used to work at a gamestop a few years ago and someone traded in a dirty, dirty xbox. It worked just fine, but this thing was pretty nasty; dusty, grimey, ick. So, we bought it and placed it in the back so we could box it up later to send it back to the warehouse to get it cleaned up (or at least that's what I think we did. That's what my manager said was going to happen). Well, at one point during the day, one of my coworkers notcied that roaches we're coming out of the thing in spades.

We wrapped the console up in tape, but it in a box, wrapped the BOX in tape, and wrote "ROACHES!!!" on the box and sent it off to whatever warehouse it was supposedly going to.

Goddamn disgusting.

@Jim Topoleski: We have a few of those jumping around. They're unpleasant, but they mainly stay in the cellar...except when they climb into the plaster walls and start singing. Grrr.

@ezacharyk: I worked with a lady who said the same thing about a rent to own place she had just prior worked at. She said that they would leave the returned or repo'ed vcrs/tvs/stereos outside on the back dock and spray them with something and the roaches would flood out.

Ick!

@Outrun1986: I would open the system to blow it out with canned air and you would see them if they were in it. The Northeast is better for a lack of roaches in general due to the winters...

@kateblack: I'm battling a roach problem right now (I'll be moving soon; it's not me, but neighbors...sigh, neverending). When I move, I'll be getting a huge U-Haul (or whatever) and bombing the SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING. Twice.

@pythonkid: Er, roaches love, love warm weather, man.

Your best bet would have been to get a u haul or something and bomb the shit out of 'em, which is what i'll be doing.

@ErwinDeimachus: I echo you on the ammonia smell of the roaches and their feces.

awesome! love it!@GuJiaXian:

@Owen Yun: Yeah house centipedes do look like aliens- my wife cornered/killed one the other day and it freaked her to no end.

I hate cave crickets too as I had a home with a basement with them in it.

My sister in California said that potato bugs were the most evil of huge azzed bugs though I have never seen one.

@Applekid: Do not use a black light on it as that is probably not donut glazing on the controllers and on/off button...

@econobiker: except NYC....we're a roach haven. park avenue, brooklyn, it doesn't matter.

but i'd much rather have roaches than bedbugs....

@downwithmonstercable: Seconded so much.

Years ago, I picked a Super Nintendo out of the garbage because I wanted to see what was inside of it (I had a SNES that worked fine in the house). I'm glad that I decided to (or maybe my mom made me) open it up in the driveway, because it sure enough had roaches in it.

Anyway, reading this article and these comments pretty much ensures that I will never buy used electronics ever again.

@pecan 3.14159265: Do not ever watch any of the Discovery Channel Verminator series if you are freaked on this. Worst one for me was the gal that bought a bedset via an un-named local sales website (craigslist) which was infested with bedbugs! The bad thing was that she icked out and dragged the bed out to the dumpster which the guy said could have then spread the bugs around her apartment more!!!

Gross bug stories to listen to:
[dsc.discovery.com]

@Dafrety: I wasn't expecting to read that this was so common with electronics.

NIGHTMARE FUEL FOR FOREVER

@sponica: Yeah I know cities. I wrote "in general" to give myself an out as most suburbs are roach free. One of my earliest roach battles was when I lived in an apartment in Elizabeth, NJ. It wsa a battle that paled upon living in Central Alabama with its huge primordial roach denizens so large that you slid when you stepped on them...

@econobiker:

Yeah, with most pest infestations, isolation and prevention is a significant part of keeping vermin out. I used to have problems with weevils in my flour and rice and since I started storing both in airtight containers I haven't seen them in over a year.

I had worked at Geek Squad for like 4 years... ive seen so many people with Roach Motels in their PCs... If i opened the case and saw one roach, we'd bag the PC up, call the customer, and send it home... Thats just SICK!!

Makes me not want to craigslist ever again lol

@babyruthless: And in WEST Texas, we have these:
[www.elaynocentricity.com]
which, in turn, eat those translucent lizard things. Yay?

That camel spider kept me awake all night with the heebie-jeebie-itching-twitches. It's been more than two weeks, and I still do a ceiling-and-floor scan of every room I walk into, and shake out the shower curtain before turning the water on.

My son is leaving for two months for the summer, and I'm going to be taking the dogs and the cats and me to a motel for a weekend, and bombing the SHIT out of this house. I should have done it when we moved in last year, but I thought just a regular pesticide treatment would be enough - no, this place needs bombs, BIG bombs, lots of them. If it's not spiders, it's ants. If it's not ants, it's centipedes*. If it's not centipedes, it's crickets. I don't see too many roaches, but I know they're there. **shudder**

*~Six inch long centipedes: [www.elaynocentricity.com]

I used to work for Sony in the early 2000s doing tech support for the PSone and the PS2. Quite often a person would send their PS2 in for repair and the tech would open it up only to see it swarming with cockroaches or spiders. Also, damage by urine (pet or otherwise) was a common occurrence.

Another way that you can get a roach problem in your home is bringing home boxes from warehouse clubs (such as Sam's, where you don't get bags, but they provide old boxes for you to use). I think that the roaches are attracted to the glue, or whatever was in the box and they lay eggs. You bring the box home, toss it in the corner and within a few days baby roaches start appearing.

i work for a cable company and I go into houses all the time where the boxes are infested with roaches. You move the box and they scatter. The thing that is even worse is that the roaches just crawl on the walls in plain view and the owners dont give a rats ass about it. Its like the roaches are supposed to be there. They dont care, they just want a new box.

@ErwinDeimachus: That was horribly fascinating and informative. Thank you.