Do all carts have a 'loose' feeling?

As some of you may know I recently obtained a 4-slot. However one thing I noticed is that all the carts I have, they seem to be loose, letting the two PCB's inside wiggle back and forth. Ironically, this seemed to be causing the coin door resets on my machine, because as soon as I tightened them up it ceased to happen.

Basically what I did was I opened up the carts, and took two well-folded over pieces of electrical tape and stuck them inbetween that plastic piece that keeps the two pcb's in line, and the plastic case cover itself. This way, when the screws closed down on the cart, it would prevent them from wiggling back and forth. As a bonus, I stuck two more pieces of folded over electrical tape between both sides (top and bottom) of the MVS slot and the cart itself, so the whole cart wouldn't wiggle in the motherboard. It seems to have fixed the problem, but something about it doesnt seem right. Why would SNK make carts that at the slightest touch, cause a system reset? Unless MVS carts shouldn't be loose at all, and theres just something missing from my carts that prevents them from doing so.

It's to prevent flexing from insertion and removal. Don't be surprised if a PCB snaps when you are taking it out or putting it in.

Well its either do what I did, or have an unplayable game due to the constant resets. Sort of a damned if you do, damned if you dont thing.

Something else seems wrong with your mobo..I prefer to have the wobble.... the carts were meant to be like that to make them slide into the mobo easier..You'll probably find a dozen posts that I've made about it..It's when the carts boards are too tight in the case that I get problem..My carts need to slide in the mobo smothly not tight..

..If one pcb out of the two is too far to one side just think about what that's doing to the mobos connectors..If you have to force a cart in it's just tearing stuff up..The wobble is so the the carts two boards can move and adjust to where the pins are in the mobo.

I'd go over other things

make sure the harness is on tight,no wobble..

The mobo pins might just be dirty making a bad connection..

You might have a cart somewhere underneath ehe connecors on the mobo..

.........
I'd go with dirty cart connectors more then anything..if carts just aren't super cleaned all kids of issues occur.


How do you clean the cart connectors?

The looseness is normal. It sounds like there is some other problem with your rig.

The usual, cotton swabs with RA. They're clean as a whistle, and I used that stuff from RS with a toothbrush to clean the slots (via hardmvs). Like, no matter what slot the game is in, if I wiggle the cart with my hands, it'll either cause a soft reset back to the animated N-G logo, or sometimes, it'll reset the entire system back to the UniBios screen. It happens with all my carts, in all my slots.

But by doing what I did, it has stopped the coin door slam from resetting the game. everytime I closed that door the game would reset, and sometimes it would green screen. Since then, it hasn't occured once.

Then your slots are loose. Not much you can do for that other than replace the connectors or double check the cleaning job you did.

channelmaniac said:

Then your slots are loose. Not much you can do for that other than replace the connectors or double check the cleaning job you did.

Click to expand...

Wait, can't you just tighten the pins on all the slots then? It's a common practice with NES connectors if they have been worn out. >.>

http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=256

Here's a guide explaining pin tightening. ShmengeTravel, if the resetting is a bad enough issue, you can always try this solution, though I'm not sure how much success you'll have doing this on a Neo-Geo, just thought I'd bring it up.

If you can find hard felt stock, you can use that to clean the slot better. It's the same type of cleaner they used for an SNES where it looks like a card that you insert into the slot.