Activision Cartridges And Blowing On Them

[reikigal]

For kicks after cleaning Activision carts and finding they still didn't work, I tried blowing on the contacts and low and behold, most of them worked.

 

I am wondering why this works? Blowing on contacts isn't suppose to work but it seems to.

 

The Atari consoles I have all have clean game ports and the game contacts are clean as well.

 

Obviously the ones the are truly fried don't work with anything but I am curious if others have noticed this with Activision games. Thanks.

[Keatah]

Moisture in breath completes intermittent circuit due to dirt on the contacts.

[Torr]

Yeah, don't actually "Blow", just give a good deep "Breath" into them, it's what I do... Like when you wanna fog up a window to write your initial or draw something dirty... thats the real trick... get that "Haaaaaaaaah" going on it.... not just them, but NES, Sega Genesis, whatever.

 

BUT... unfortunately even that small amount of moisture that is increasing conductivity is also going to corrode the contacts over the long haul.

 

BUT... contrary to popular belief, water is NOT a conductor, it's an insulator! It's only all the minute particles dissolved into water that makes it a conductor.

PURE H2O will NOT conduct electricity, so if you have a cart that will not work, and your REALLY wanna play it, just eat a LOT of green vegetables (IE Iron) and skip brushing your teeth. That bugger will load for you.

Edited December 19, 2015 by Torr

[AtariBrian]

When I have a problem with Activision carts ... which is all the time I clean them three times with rubbing alcohol scrubbing and shining the contacts . And that plus the abrasion of putting the cart in a few times usually works . And when the rubbing alcohol doesn't I then use Deoxit and that will get it working for sure . And when it doesn't then you know your cart is dead .

[Inky]

We used either a q tip with rubbing alcohol, or a gritty track corrosion eraser that can be purchased from any model train store to clean the game contacts

Edited December 19, 2015 by Inky

[SSG]

time for some good old fashioned contact cleaner!