Consistently get a green screen with 5200 homebrews

[+DamonicFury]

I consistently get a green screen when inserting almost all 5200 homebrews. The things just won’t load, and it seems that the issue is that the circuit boards don't quite go deep enough into the cart slot.  None of my vintage carts have this problem.  
 

My fix for this has always been to clip off part of a plastic thumbtack to force the circuit board that extra millimeter deeper that it seems to need.  (See picture.)  But I can’t imagine everyone else is doing this... is their perhaps something I need to do to the 5200 itself to make these work better?

 

(Copied this from the HSC forum where I posted it by accident)

[+DamonicFury]

 

   11 hours ago,  Albert said: 

That's interesting, I've sold tons of 5200 carts using these boards and have never had someone report to me that they don't work.  And I do test every single game in one of my 5200 systems before even put a label on the cartridge. How long has this been an issue for you?

 

 ..Al

Umm, quite a few years.  I’m a bit embarrassed thinking about just how many carts I’ve modded this way.  There must be something odd with my system. 

[bikeguychicago]

I've never had this problem with any of the homebrews I've purchased. Honestly, the only ones that have ever given me any issues are Activision carts. They have to be in the Goldilocks zone in order to start up properly.

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by bikeguychicago

[+DamonicFury]

7 minutes ago, bikeguychicago said:

I've never had this problem with any of the homebrews I've purchased. Honestly, the only ones that have ever given me any issues are Activision carts. They have to be in the Goldilocks zone to start up properly.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean there.  For me the difference is that Activision carts are finicky, but can be made to work without modification through cleaning or repeatedly inserting the cart til it works.  I can't get homebrews to work at all until I do the thumbtack mod.  I've opened up the 5200 before looking for a reason for this, but I'm going to try that again soon. 

[+DamonicFury]

Opened it up and I still don’t have an answer.  Removing the metal shield has no effect.  It’s a 4-port that’s been modded to use the 2600 adapter, so I do wonder if the three wires that pop up through the cart slot hole may be part of the issue.  But I’m not going to mess with them to find out.  I guess the real solution is just to use a different 5200.  This one’s just somehow a tad off. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

It is possible those wires are part of the issue if they are just a tad thicker than some I've seen used. I've also seen where these wires were routed along the bottom of the PCB instead of the method used here and that seems like a better way to do it I think.

 

[+DamonicFury]

On 4/23/2020 at 2:39 PM, -^CrossBow^- said:

It is possible those wires are part of the issue if they are just a tad thicker than some I've seen used. I've also seen where these wires were routed along the bottom of the PCB instead of the method used here and that seems like a better way to do it I think.

 

Yeah, that sure seems possible.  My thumbtack mod just pushes the circuit board down a tiny extra bit, so that extra space between the cart port and the case plastic created by the wires may just be to blame. 
 

Anyhow, I swapped that 4-port out for a 2-port I had stored away... of course, that doesn’t have any troubles at all even with an unmodified homebrew.  Maybe someday I’ll attempt to re-route those wires, but it’s not an urgent project.