Problematic Carts

[tradyblix]

So, I received several new carts today that I wanted to test out, including Galaxian, Pac Man Jr 2600, and Venture 2600 (red label). Quite a few carts I tested had problems initially like some of the first carts I loaded with 7800. Although the carts looked clean, a subsequent q-tip cleaning with multi-cleaner did come up with dirt, so they weren't super clean. And one had a long dead roach head inside of it, which I was able to get out. (Gross. Such is life of a casual cart collector I guess.) 

 

So... These carts initially didn't load. even after several attempts, but I was eventually able to get all of them working fine. Jr Pacman is such a fine game btw, highly recommended. But I noticed some odd things, sometimes I had to try multiple insertions before it works, so makes me wonder if contact or friction on the carts affect the data dump. Sometimes the carts would black screen or sometimes have garbled display. I'll keep an eye on these, but there are definately carts out there that don't play well with the cart loader. 

 

I might go try to get some contact cleaner in case it's related to electrical conductivity, in the hopes of improving a few of these that remain a bit stubborn. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by tradyblix

[+LS650]

I've had much the same experience.  Some carts take a heck of a cleaning but once they work the first time they seem fine.

[tradyblix]

36 minutes ago, ls650 said:

I've had much the same experience.  Some carts take a heck of a cleaning but once they work the first time they seem fine.

Yeah exactly, once you get them working, they're okay after that. mostly. Yeah. It's odd. 

[Brad_from_the_80s]

Pretty much the same, once they start working they're fine.  I do have a couple of rickety old carts in particular that sometimes need to be re-inserted for some reason, and I've seen the black screen or the garbled screen with some noise, but they always work eventually.  I don't think it has anything to do with those specific titles, just age/condition of the carts.

 

I do feel like some people online have exaggerated the load times though.  It definitely isn't 20+ seconds.  A little slower from cold start, but hot-swapping it is just a few seconds, barely more than I need to sit down again.  Not instantaneous, but massively quicker than the full launch of a game on an Xbox or something - now THAT takes an eternity by comparison.  I don't know if they can realistically make it much faster, but I don't really see it as any kind of a problem.

[Mockduck]

Is this really any different than using a regular 2600 though? Dirty old carts struggle to play in the original hardware as well, it's common to have to clean them even if they "look clean" due to age and storage conditions and such. I'm surprised people think their old carts will suddenly become new when put into a new machine? Definitely makes compatibility testing a bit more work, but any cart being tested for 2600+ compatibility should get a good contact clean and dry for what like 12-24 hours before being used for testing. In some ways this is exciting in that it appears to mean that the roms are actually being dumped rather than being used to recognize and unlock as a key mechanism the ROMs stored on the unit, as the Retron at least used to do. So a dirty cart will lead to a bad ROM dump, right?

[chad5200]

17 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

Is this really any different than using a regular 2600 though? Dirty old carts struggle to play in the original hardware as well, it's common to have to clean them even if they "look clean" due to age and storage conditions and such. I'm surprised people think their old carts will suddenly become new when put into a new machine? Definitely makes compatibility testing a bit more work, but any cart being tested for 2600+ compatibility should get a good contact clean and dry for what like 12-24 hours before being used for testing. In some ways this is exciting in that it appears to mean that the roms are actually being dumped rather than being used to recognize and unlock as a key mechanism the ROMs stored on the unit, as the Retron at least used to do. So a dirty cart will lead to a bad ROM dump, right?

The problem with this logic is I have had many instances where the cart will always play great in the old 2600... but the new 2600+ is struggling to read it.  So I clean it more... and it still can't read in the new 2600+... so I clean it more... and eventually the new 2600+ reads it.  While all along, the old 2600 was reading it from the start.

 

[+LS650]

24 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

Is this really any different than using a regular 2600 though? 

Yes: carts that would work fine first try on one of my old 2600s (a heavy 6-er, a Sears Video Arcade II, and a 2600 Jr) sometimes needed a very thorough scrubbing to run on the 2600+.  The Plus definitely seems to be less tolerant when reading old carts.  

[Brad_from_the_80s]

That's what I've been hearing - the 2600+ is much more sensitive and finicky about reading old carts, although you can generally get them to work in the 2600+ if they are functional and not otherwise incompatible.  For me it has been about 3/4 or more are trouble free after a good clean maybe, and the remainder are still temperamental sometimes.  Usually I just have to re-insert once.  My guess is all of them would work first time every time in a real 2600.  Maybe just the nature of the beast.

 

And we know pretty well at this point that carts are being dumped to memory - there are almost certainly no roms stored on the unit.  A dirty cart usually means just failure to load.  On rare occasion (for me) there will be bad contact or a bad read resulting in a garbled pixelated display and maybe some audible noise.  And one time I was playing 7800 DK and it seemed to be functioning fine except that two rows of pixels in the gorilla sprite were shifted horizontally quite a bit.  Re-seat and reset and it went away and I've not seen it since.  Maybe an emulation error, but possibly another subtle glitch in reading the cart.