Trog cart in really rough shape - is it salvigable?

[Hatta]

Alcohol dries cleanly. Ethanol and isopropanol are small molecules and very volatile. What you are seeing with your paint on glass test is more likely removal of ions or oils bound to the surface of the glass.

70% IPA is OK(not great) to use on carts. It will just take longer to dry thoroughly. If not dried thoroughly it will promote corrosion. So to be safe, 97% IPA is better. Denatured alcohol is better because it's ethanol + methanol, which is smaller and more volatile, and will dry even faster.

Of course the best thing to use is a contact cleaner based on a non-polar solvent.

[flamepanther]

You can also get rubbing alcohol in a 90% solution, and that's what I always get. It dries too fast for the water content to concern me, and I've never seen it leave a residue behind.

Ironically, even though most cartridges warn not to clean with alcohol, benzene, "or other solvents," most of the official cleaning kits came with an isopropyl alcohol solution as their "cleaning fluid". Go figure.


What I've seen really kill contacts is blowing on them. I've seen the 72-pin connector of an NES that was so badly corroded that there wasn't any copper left under the green oxidized crap. The pins (or what was left of them) simply snapped when I tried to clean them. The owner: "I don't know how that could happen! Whenever it gets dirty, I blow in it to clean it out!"
"That's probably how."
"Oh."

[thelolotov]

Alcohol dries cleanly. Ethanol and isopropanol are small molecules and very volatile. What you are seeing with your paint on glass test is more likely removal of ions or oils bound to the surface of the glass.

70% IPA is OK(not great) to use on carts. It will just take longer to dry thoroughly. If not dried thoroughly it will promote corrosion. So to be safe, 97% IPA is better. Denatured alcohol is better because it's ethanol + methanol, which is smaller and more volatile, and will dry even faster.

Of course the best thing to use is a contact cleaner based on a non-polar solvent.

Woah woah woah, I've been using alcohol my entire life here, this is news to me.

I use 70%, and I always run a q-tip over it afterward to make sure it is completely dry, do I have anything to worry about?

[jinn]

You might want to try and put a very thin layer of solder on the contact pads.