Cleaning MVS carts in water?

Neo Alec

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I always thought it was common sense to use distilled water. It's not like it's expensive anyway. I normally just clean the contacts with water (you shouldn't have to dip the whole board, which I wouldn't advise). And it's very easy to miss some, or have some water leak into the casing when you're cleaning an unopened cart. That's why it's always better to play it safe and use distilled water. If you use non-distilled, you're still leaving behind trace amounts of minerals, which could cause problems for someone cleaning them in the future with distilled water, if not again dried immediately. Honestly, I think it's irresponsible to clean games with tap water.
 
topher

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lachlan said:
Can you're cart still rust if you used tap water and then dried quickly with a hair dryer?
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YES, I am an enviromental scientist and have to deal with things like this all the time (water/wastewater scientist). You should be more woried about the contaminents in the water that are left on your cart. If you have DI water or acess to it, by all means use that and not tap water.
 
Neo Alec

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Do you guys iron your clothes with tap water too? You can spare a few drops when it's time to clean games. I'd might as well blame the people in this thread for every crappy-ass condition cart I've ever gotten.
 
Dr. Jigglin

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It seems some people are getting a little touchy about washing cart's in normal tap water.
Countless people have washed their boards/carts in tap water and have had no problems what so ever, distilled water or not it still cleans them perfectly and usually fixes any problems you had with it before hand.
Wether or not you think it's irresponcible to wash carts/boards in normal tap water doesn't matter as I'll still be using tap water.

Nothing to loose sleep over.
 
MKL

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To wash a board (and I was especially referring to big motherboards) you need several litres of water, not just a few drops. Using distilled water would be better of course but is it convenient to waste such amounts of distilled water for just one PCB? What if you need to wash many PCBs? It's obviously an impracticable way. After having used tap water to wash PCBs for several years (started in the early 90's) I've found that it is an acceptable compromise (unless you leave the PCBs soaking wet...).

Now the funny thing reading Neo Alec's posts is that he says he uses (distilled) water to clean cart connectors which really does not make any sense as it doesn't remove grease. Connectors are meant to be cleaned with metal degreasers like trichloroethylene. I use that all the time to clean up connectors, solder joints, etc. and nothing works better.
 
Neo Alec

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I don't know where your carts have been, but mine don't have grease on them. And who's ever heard of immersing PCB's in water?
 
Neo Alec

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Mine weren't that bad. I feel lucky now. Of course the new ones were perfect, too.
 
Dr. Jigglin

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Neo Alec said:
I don't know where your carts have been, but mine don't have grease on them. And who's ever heard of immersing PCB's in water?
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If you don't agree with washing pcb's in water then don't post in this thread.
 
R

Reznor007

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Neo Alec said:
I don't know where your carts have been, but mine don't have grease on them. And who's ever heard of immersing PCB's in water?
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PCB factories. I have dipped a $5,000 PCB into very hot water with the chemical Axarel32 for cleaning when I worked for Hitachi. After being submersed in the chemical water they are rinsed with more water, and blow dried in a machine.

The only things that didn't go through were plastic enclosed relays(since water may not be fully dried out of them) and large electrolytic capacitors since water could soak into them and change their value.

On old arcade PCB's it's safe to wash them in water, and on many of the old ones it would be helpful to replace the elec caps(the aluminum can things) with new ones of the same value since they dry out over time. A capkit for your PCB if you will.
 
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I got a cart from yaton that has some kind of sound issue, I opened it and cleaned with rubing alcohol around the chips, but it didn't help, so let me get it straight, once you take it a part you just put it in water basin ?????
How long should you keep it in water ?
is it really safe ??
This whole thing sounds to weird for me
 
Dr. Jigglin

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JayL said:
I got a cart from yaton that has some kind of sound issue, I opened it and cleaned with rubing alcohol around the chips, but it didn't help, so let me get it straight, once you take it a part you just put it in water basin ?????
How long should you keep it in water ?
is it really safe ??
This whole thing sounds to weird for me
Click to expand...

Open you're MVS cart and take out the boards (keep in mind which board goes in first ect.) and then have the tap running and scrub the boards with an old toothbrush head and then dry with a cloth and then dry fully with a hair dryer (usually until the board is atleast warm or hot) and remember dry under the chips too!
 
B

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My first post here so I'll make it a good one.

Tapwater works fine. Using distilled water is fine aswell of course but would be a huge waste :P

Anyways, if your cart is having issues there are a few steps to take.

1. Clean the connector with some alocohol or similar.

2. Check solderjoints under each pcb... I had some problems with my Ninja Masters MVS and it was because of some beaten up solderjoints. Resoldered them and it worked fine :)

3. Give it a good washing. This is the way I've done it which worked fine.

Remove the pcbs from the cart and heat up a basin of tapwater, it should be rather hot. Then add washing liquid (is that the word?) just like when you are doing ordinary dishes.
Gently stroke the pcb with a dish brush (I think thats the english word) so that it's all clean. Then remove the pcb from the water and put it under running tapwater (a bit colder) until all the washing up liquid is gone.

Then you just have to dry it... I put them in the oven for 15minutes (75degreece C) which worked fine, but you can use other methods too i guess. Just make sure it is dry before you power it up.

This method has worked fine for all 5 carts that I've cleaned :)

Hope it helps.

And tapwater is NOT bad for pcbs as long as there arent any batteries or capacitators on them...
 
Razoola

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Buffi said:
My first post here so I'll make it a good one.

Tapwater works fine. Using distilled water is fine aswell of course but would be a huge waste :P

Anyways, if your cart is having issues there are a few steps to take.

1. Clean the connector with some alocohol or similar.

2. Check solderjoints under each pcb... I had some problems with my Ninja Masters MVS and it was because of some beaten up solderjoints. Resoldered them and it worked fine :)

3. Give it a good washing. This is the way I've done it which worked fine.

Remove the pcbs from the cart and heat up a basin of tapwater, it should be rather hot. Then add washing liquid (is that the word?) just like when you are doing ordinary dishes.
Gently stroke the pcb with a dish brush (I think thats the english word) so that it's all clean. Then remove the pcb from the water and put it under running tapwater (a bit colder) until all the washing up liquid is gone.

Then you just have to dry it... I put them in the oven for 15minutes (75degreece C) which worked fine, but you can use other methods too i guess. Just make sure it is dry before you power it up.

This method has worked fine for all 5 carts that I've cleaned :)

Hope it helps.

And tapwater is NOT bad for pcbs as long as there arent any batteries or capacitators on them...
Click to expand...

Sounds more like a cooking lesson :) Im not sure I would recomend putting a PCB into the oven or heating up water with a PCB already in if thats what you mean. It just sounds like more room for errors and damaging the PCB.

I can't see with whats wrong with simply running warm tap water and washing the PCB under that and then finally drying with a hair dryer.

Raz
 
B

Buffi

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Well I meant that you first filled the basin with warm tap water of course :)
And then gently bathed your pcb :P

And a hair dryer might work as well I suppose but I wouldn't be surprised if the pcb got warmer from a hairdryer then from an oven set to 75C.

Anyways, 75C is nothing for the ciruits and far below the melting temperature for solder.
 
chris1

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Buffi said:
Btw... here's an aftershot of my samsho2 that I bought from yaton...
As most people might know his games are usually... dusty beyond recognition.

After a nice bath it looked all shiney and new and worked fine :P
http://buffserv.campus.ltu.se/arkad/mvser/samsho2.jpg
Click to expand...




Looks Great..
I've actually sat over my sink with a tooth brush,contact cleaner/moist toothbrush etc and cleaned off dirty carts (Yaton)myself.. :buttrock:
The dusty dirt is of some sort that I've never come accross before...It's real dry and fine grain.
...........................................................
Next you really need to clean those contacts.
I use dry Scotch Brite and 91% alcohol.

Will come out looking like this..
DSCF0011.jpg
 
B

Buffi

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I don't know the english word for it but the thing i used for the connectors is called Aceton in sweden (a common ingrediense in nail polish remover).

And yeah, the grey grainy dust was in my carts aswell.
 
Gummy Bear

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My boards look just like that after a good brush and an air-duster have been round them. :glee:

You can see your face in them.
 
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