Friday, April 18, 2008

Cleaning card slots

Well, I promised an article on cleaning card slots, and here it is. To clean a card slot you will need the following things:

Rubbing Alcohol (not the mint stuff, the regular stuff)
Q-Tips
An old toothbrush
Some stuff, white, absorbent paper that won't tear easily (construction paper works pretty good)
(optional) a dental pick

All right, so to begin you should expose the card slot. This varies from machine to machines. In the case of my NES the whole slot can come out of the machine if you take it apart. For my Atari I take out the main motherboard to remove the protective cover to clean it. Also at this time it would be a good idea to protect anything which you do not want rubbing alcohol to get on, such as yourself, furniture, exposed electronics, etc.

1. dip the end of a q-tip into the alcohol and use it to clean off any grime from the outside of the connector. (the housing, not the metal pins inside)
2. use the toothbrush to remove and obvious particles in the card slot (I had one unit that had some grass or something inside, I swept it out with the brush)
3. Fold up the paper so that it's easy to hold and can fit inside the card slot. I make mine into a rectangle shape about an inch wide by 4 inches long. Put a little bit of alcohol on the paper and push the paper in between the pins as though it were a cartridge, and then rub around to remove grime. Repeat as necessary. Be careful not to get the paper too wet. If it's too wet it will tear when you put it into the slot and then you will be stuck pulling tiny pieces of wet paper out of the slot.
4. If any of the pins are bent or if there are still hard-to-get chunks of junk inside the connector, get out the dental pick and gently pry the pins back or use the pick to remove any leftover bits of paper, etc. If you are careful with the paper and you don't have bent pins you won't need the pick at all.
5. Before you use your newly cleaned slot, make sure to clean the things that will be going into the slot. If it's a game cartridge, for example, use a q-tip and alcohol to remove corrosion and dirt off the carts pins. If you don't do this you will just be putting more dirt into your nice clean slot the next time you use it.

Enjoy, your card slot is now nice and clean, ready to go!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks -Sounds like good common sense but what about taking the cleaning of the cards a little farther with maybe some fine Steele wool?