Common knowledge stuff??

I've been looking for a while and haven't found anything like general knowledge stuff. a few questions that I've thought of over the last few days are.
what kinda things should you do before swapping out your carts (I'm assuming you have to turn off the cabinet to swap the carts)?
Is it bad to turn on/off the cabinet a lot?
The joystick ports, sounds like you can just plug in any neogeo controllers to work with those in 4 player games, is this true?
What kinda things in general are good for keeping your PCBs, carts, and cabinet alive?

sorry but is swear I tried searching the forum and the google for the answers to those questions.

1. Turn the system off. That's about it.

2. I don't like to turn mine on / off a bunch all at once. It can't be good for the monitor. Not that I'm basing that on any real technical information, it just seems wrong.

3. You can plug in any neo controllers, but it doesn't work for 4-player games. The joystick ports work just like whatever's hooked to the JAMMA edge. 4-player games require another board, cart, etc.

4. If you can get the board-mounted battery replaced with something on a wire, or removed entirely, that will save you from corrosion when the battery starts leaking. Outside of that, just keep your slot / cart contacts clean and you shouldn't have many problems.

I've always found that the "common knowledge" stuff is the hardest to come by sometimes. Either it isn't posted anywhere because everyone assumes you know already or the search results are so polluted with crap that you can't find anything useful.

I was searching for joystick ports and could only find information on people making superguns. I'll look up stuff on the battery. I'm not to bad with a soldering iron if thats what it takes to correct that. I hate it when batteries "leak".

3. If I plug in a controler say in player 2 port does it replace player two on the cabinet or would they both work at the same time?

also thanks for the reply.

Penguinmasta said:

3. If I plug in a controler say in player 2 port does it replace player two on the cabinet or would they both work at the same time?

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I haven't tried it but I'd expect they both work at the same time. There's nothing special going on with Neo controllers, they're just a bunch of switches, just like a cabinet.

Yes,always turn off the cabinet to swap the carts..

Penguinmasta said:

3. If I plug in a controler say in player 2 port does it replace player two on the cabinet or would they both work at the same time?

Click to expand...

They both work at the same time.

Thats kinda cool I'll have to pickup a controller as well just to dork around with .

Where i can find the stuff for the memory card and how does that work? can you save your place/settings on it or does it just keep scores/stats/best player names?

Penguinmasta said:

Thats kinda cool I'll have to pickup a controller as well just to dork around with .

Where i can find the stuff for the memory card and how does that work? can you save your place/settings on it or does it just keep scores/stats/best player names?

Click to expand...

AFAIK, the memory card only holds game save data, not high scores.

chris1 said:

Yes, ALWAYS turn off the cabinet to swap the carts..

Click to expand...

Fixed.