How to Clean a Game Console Cartridge

(2 votes, average 5.00 out of 5)

A classic symptom of older game systems which use cartridges is that sometimes the game cartridge itself can become corroded and unusable. There are several ways to clean cartridges, from the easiest to most desperate. First, here are some common things NOT to do in order to clean your game cartridge:

Things NOT To Do

Do NOT blow into the cartridge. Yes it is a quick fix. Yes it does work temporarily. However, due to the moisture of you blowing onto the cartridge connectors, eventually, it *will* corrode the contacts, and you *will* have to use step 2 below to get your cart working again.
Do NOT use household cleaners such as Armor All or Pledge. This may seem obvious, but many people attempt to clean their game console cartridges with cleaners in order to polish the game contacts. This does NOT work!

Things to Try

There are two main things that can be done to try and clean your cartridges. The first is a safer method -- always try this first:

1. Use rubbing alcohol

Take a q-tip and soak it with rubbing alcohol. Leave it soaked, and clean your cartridge by rubbing roughly on one side of the contacts. Next, take the cartridge, insert it into the cartridge slot of the console a couple times, in and out, quickly. Next, take the dry end, and rub again on the same side. Repeat until you see the dirt disappear from the game contacts. Once all the dirt is gone, go to the other side of the cartridge connectors. and repeat. After you are sure the cartridge is dry, try it out! If it does not work, move on to step two.

2. CAREFULLY APPLY 2000 GRIT SANDPAPER

There must be some corrosion on the contacts if the game still does not boot. 2000 grit sandpaper will polish those metal contacts right off, and make them look shiny new. It will take off a tad of the PCB, but its nothing to be concerned of. Generally enough isn't taken off enough to even remove the color of the PCB, let alone ruining it.

It is best to take apart the cartridge if possible. It's the easiest way to get into the contacts. Nintendo games use special bits to open them, but you can find those with a quick google search. Take your worst credit card or some kind of card that is like it. Fold the sandpaper across the card, of course, the abrasive side out. Now, sand with medium strength (not too light, but not hard either) on one side of the connectors, until you see a shine on the contacts. Now, repeat on the other side. Don't do this until you do step 1 first, because step 1 also cleans the cartridge slot's contacts.

Now your game cartridge should work like new! This should work for most video game systems which use cartridges, including NES, SNES, N64, Colecovision, Intellivision, Vectrex, Genesis, and anything that is not CD based.

Partner Links:

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 July 2010 13:15

» Pass VLAN traffic (802.1q) to Virtual Machine on KVM/QEMU

It may be desirable to pass VLAN traffic from a virtual machine out to the wider network. This tutorial assumes that you have configured the guest to connect to the host using a bridge interface, e.g. br0 (). Please Note: The default KVM/QEMU virtual network card, rtl8139, DOES NOT support VLANs (802.1q) (, ). To use VLANs with the guest, you must use the virtio virtual network interface in your KVM configuration.The easiest way to set this up is to use the same network bridge for all traffic,...

» Mount a WebDAV filesystem (like box.net) on Linux using davfs2

You can easily mount a WebDAV filesystem on Linux so that you can access the files just like they were on your local computer. One way to do is to install the davfs2 package (this is the Ubuntu/Debian package name, though it should be similar for other distros). Once you have installed it, add an entry to /etc/davfs2/secrets with your login credentials for the WebDAV account. For box.net, the command would look like this:sudo echo “https://www.box.net/dav username password” >>...

» How to Fix the PS2 Disc Read Error

Although the Playstation 2 is a system well-known for it's longevity and durability, the fact that it is over a decade old means that it inevitably will have a few issues. The most common of which is the infamous disc read error. This is characterized by entering a disc into the PS2, but instead of booting in the game, an error message comes up saying the disc could not be read or the disc was not recognized. There are several ways to fix it, listed below in order of least to most...