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Used a pink eraser on my NES cartridge pins for 20 years and a guy at a swap meet in Toledo finally corrected me
I picked up an old NES at a garage sale back in high school and every time a game would glitch out I would scrub the pins with a pink eraser like my cousin taught me. Fast forward to last month at a retro game swap in Toledo and a guy named Dennis watched me do it on a copy of Contra and kind of winced. He pulled a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a few Q-tips out of his bag and cleaned the same cart in about a minute, then showed me the eraser had actually been leaving tiny bits of rubber dust behind that were making the connection worse over time. I felt pretty dumb standing there because I had been blaming the console for a good chunk of those glitches for two decades. Dennis said he sees it all the time and that erasers are fine in a pinch but they wear down the thin gold plating if you keep at it. I went home and cleaned all 34 of my carts with alcohol and cotton swabs and every single one booted on the first try. So what is the worst old tip you picked up from a family member that you later found out was doing more harm than good?
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mark_ward1mo ago
I read a thing on some retro forum years back that said the same deal, erasers leave behind a residue that gunks up the pins and folks just keep scrubbing harder thinking it helps. My uncle swore by blowing into the cartridges, which we now know just coats the contacts in spit and makes them rust faster. Took me way too long to switch to alcohol and a swab, but it's night and day once you do.
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