Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
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Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
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Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#2So I used to pull out Unibus cards from the PDP-11 and rub the contacts with a pencil eraser to get the corrosion off them. HP machines of course had literally gold plated connectors which did not corrode pretty much ever.
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#3It was a revelation when I decided to try actually cleaning the contacts on a NES. The results of a little alcohol and a brush made of folded notebook paper earned me the reputation of a magician in my circle of friends.
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#4After reading the sidebar about the kid who licked his cartridges, I completely forgot about the original article.
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#5As a wee lad in the last millennium I was an authorized Nintendo repairman.
Blowing on the cart sometimes worked, if there was errant dust or fluff in the way. But in the long run the salty moist air would cause a corrosive layer of gunk on the contacts. Normal procedure was to open each cart and clean them with a good eraser then an alcohol wash.
The bigger problem was bad design in the original NES. The cart plugged into a component that looked like a harmonica and then pressed downwards, levering against a pretty heavy spring. This perpendicular stress caused the contacts to break, first causing contact flakiness, then failure. The SuperNES and GameBoy fixed this problem with a vertical insertion that carried over into the N64 and others.
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#6After reading the sidebar about the kid who licked his cartridges, I completely forgot about the original article.
That used to work with ISA cards in the late 80s for me :)
It made the corrosion worse in the long run but it worked good enough for a bit.
A friend of mine used spit as solder flux as well once. Worked quite well.
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#7As a wee lad in the last millennium I was an authorized Nintendo repairman. Blowing on the cart sometimes worked, if there was errant dust or fluff in the way. But in the long run the salty moist air would cause a corrosive layer of gunk on the contacts. Normal procedure was to open each cart and clean them with a good eraser then an alcohol wash. The bigger problem was bad design in the original NES. The cart plugge…
The force was actually borne by the contacts? Man. You'd think they would have put the contacts on something more flexible, and transmit the force with the outer covering.
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#8As a wee lad in the last millennium I was an authorized Nintendo repairman. Blowing on the cart sometimes worked, if there was errant dust or fluff in the way. But in the long run the salty moist air would cause a corrosive layer of gunk on the contacts. Normal procedure was to open each cart and clean them with a good eraser then an alcohol wash. The bigger problem was bad design in the original NES. The cart plugge…
The force was actually borne by the contacts? Man. You'd think they would have put the contacts on something more flexible, and transmit the force with the outer covering.
Yep. I think the idea was to make it behave like the toploading VCRs which were around at the time: insert then press down. Very often customers would refer to the cartridges as "Nintendo tapes".
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#9I'm surprised seeing those photos of the game boards outside their cartridges. Not only are they much smaller than the cartridge, but they are really just some memory and the lock-out chip!
Re: Did Blowing Into The NES Cartridge Really Work?
#10The trick is to filter the cartridge opening with your shirt THEN blow into it.