This is really heavily off-topic, but I just had to ask, on the off chance
that someone knew already how to handle it.

The Background:
A few years ago, I had given to me some RF transistors (2N5179 RF
transistors, in the TO-72 package).  They had been outside, in the rain for
some time near a dumpster before someone found them, and I had them given to
me.  I sorted through them, and removed all the rusty ones, and all the ones
that had turned all sorts of strange colours and were covered in black
stuff, and am now left with a mixture of clean allright looking ones, and
ones with a strange light tan looking deposit on the bottom on top of the
dark red/brown filling, where the leads come out (TO-72 package) and, since
they had already been in the rain and were (being transistors and all)
hermetically sealed, I tried to wash it off of one (1) of them, with no
success.

The Question:
Has anyone ever seen this kind of degradation on transistors before?  If so,
is it likely to cause performance degradation? Are there any problems
associated with this buildup?

And, seperately, are these likely to work as IR detectors if I cut open the
top of the can? (I figure that an RF transistor should make for faster data
rates in a receiver)

TIA,

Brendan

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