3 ms·

My friends blew on their Nintendo cartridges. It was like muscle memory for them. They'd encounter a glitch, yank the cartridge out, blow on it, and then thru

by ssl-3 2y ago

My friends blew on their Nintendo cartridges. It was like muscle memory for them. They'd encounter a glitch, yank the cartridge out, blow on it, and then thrust it back in and hope that it'd be better for the next hurried speedrun. Rituals were had of blowing nto games before even playing them the first time, so as to ward off the glitch demons pre-emptively. We never did this in our family. When we started encountering glitches, our dad called Nintendo to ask about the problems we were having with the [rather expensive] system he'd bought. They sent a kit for cleaning cartridges, which included a wide, flat absorbant swab wrapped with some kind of seemingly-synthetic absorbent material and a little drippy bottle full of isopropyl alcohol. This actually worked. (IIRC, during that phone call they also issued interim instructions for using a Q-tip and isopropyl to get things moving while the package was shipped.) We didn't have anywhere near the problems with glitches that our friends did. Mostly, the games just worked with some occsasional cleaning and time to dry out.

tiltowait 2y ago
This is a well-known remedy in collector’s circles. An eraser on the contacts also does wonders. One common cause for NES glitches is for the 72-pin connector to get bent out of shape. You can find replacements on eBay, and it makes a world of difference. Surprisingly, it’s also good advice not to push the cart down once it’s inserted, as that increases pressure on the pins and bends them more over time (despite the slot allegedly being zero insertion force).
- ssl-3 2y ago
  A pencil eraser is a well-known remedy in all kinds of circles. A friend brings me his crashy scratch-built computer. I take the lid off, use a pencil eraser on the DIMMs, and reassemble it. It's fine after that, minus a couple of atoms or so of gold plating thickness. As long as it's a good pencil eraser, anyway -- some leave a smeary mess. 25 years or so ago, I was reading that the cart socket on the Nintendo used repurposed regular card-edge parts; parts that were never meant to work at multiple angles. I don't know the validity of this, since I haven't yet restored either of the two NESs that I have here (both of which I should have sold -- even broken and dirty -- during the NES Mini craze). I've thus never had a good, stern look at that socket. (But back in the 1980s, between us young kids and our electronics-luddite dad and a phone call to Nintendo, isopropyl was the answer.)

by ssl-3 2y ago

tiltowait 2y ago

This is a well-known remedy in collector’s circles. An eraser on the contacts also does wonders. One common cause for NES glitches is for the 72-pin connector to get bent out of shape. You can find replacements on eBay, and it makes a world of difference. Surprisingly, it’s also good advice not to push the cart down once it’s inserted, as that increases pressure on the pins and bends them more over time (despite the slot allegedly being zero insertion force).

ssl-3 2y ago
A pencil eraser is a well-known remedy in all kinds of circles. A friend brings me his crashy scratch-built computer. I take the lid off, use a pencil eraser on the DIMMs, and reassemble it. It's fine after that, minus a couple of atoms or so of gold plating thickness. As long as it's a good pencil eraser, anyway -- some leave a smeary mess. 25 years or so ago, I was reading that the cart socket on the Nintendo used repurposed regular card-edge parts; parts that were never meant to work at multiple angles. I don't know the validity of this, since I haven't yet restored either of the two NESs that I have here (both of which I should have sold -- even broken and dirty -- during the NES Mini craze). I've thus never had a good, stern look at that socket. (But back in the 1980s, between us young kids and our electronics-luddite dad and a phone call to Nintendo, isopropyl was the answer.)