MVS Cart slot replacement.

Finch

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Anyone ever do this? I realize it will be a massive pain in the ass with how many contacts there are to desolder. My MV-1C CMVS is really picky about the exact angle the cartridge is at otherwise it doesn't want to boot. I've cleaned the contacts on all my games and done the creditcard & T-shirt trick with deoxit and that helps, but it's still pretty picky. Without the original plastic shell over the MV-1C the cartridge can wiggle back and fourth quite a bit in the slot and it feels like every game needs to be nudged to just the right angle.

I've checked solder joints and they all look good, so I think the tension on the contacts is just not where it used to be. My 161-in-1 boots perfectly every time, and requires a fair but more force to insert due to slightly thicker PCBs, which makes me think it's definitely the contact tension.

Anyone know the part number for those edge connectors? they look like something I could just buy from mouser.
 

Jumpingmanjim

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Could you try manually bending the pins like in this video? I did that with my NES and now the cartridge slot is really firm.
 

Finch

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I'll give this a watch, might be worth a try. before I go soldering a million annoying little pins :-P
 

Xian Xi

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It's a lot of work and you will need a lot of heat.
 

Finch

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It's a lot of work and you will need a lot of heat.

I may try the pin bending first. I have a big heat gun, a fancy soldering heat gun, high power soldering stations and a Hakko de-soldering gun, so I probably have the heat, but knowing it's still a pain in the ass makes me think I'll try to rejuvenate it other ways first.
 

Xian Xi

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I may try the pin bending first. I have a big heat gun, a fancy soldering heat gun, high power soldering stations and a Hakko de-soldering gun, so I probably have the heat, but knowing it's still a pain in the ass makes me think I'll try to rejuvenate it other ways first.

Do you have problems with all games? How are you cleaning the pins in the slot?
 

Finch

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Pretty much every game will fail to boot unless I kind of push the cart back in the slot a bit (IE: tilt it away from the Jamma edge, if that makes any sense) This includes stuff like a copy of Garou and Metal Slug 3 that look like they were only ever taken out of their bubble wrap once. I've dissembled some carts and given them the full pencil eraser treatment because they were really grungy, most others just got a quick Q-tip wipe with deoxit. I cleaned the slot on the MV-1C by wrapping some old Tshirt around a credit card with deoxit sprayed on it and pushed that into the slot all down each of the two slots and got a fair bit of grunge out. It definitely helped some of the pickier carts (fuck you Waku Waku 7) but except for the damn 161-in-1 pretty much every cart I own can fail to boot once in awhile until wiggled a bit.

I own a MV-1fz too that was partially consolized, and I have way less trouble with that, and the slot feels tighter (incoming joke), but then again the 1Fz still has the plastic shell over it so the cartridge can't wiggle much at all when inserted.
 

Jumpingmanjim

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Would low melting point solder like Chip Quik help with removing the slot? or is it just too big for that?
 

Finch

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Would low melting point solder like Chip Quik help with removing the slot? or is it just too big for that?

I think it's just to big. It might help if you also used a heat gun to keep it all melted the whole time. I was just going to mask off everything with heat shielding tape and blast it with a big industrial heat gun. Only problem is that unless the solder on every single pin it totally melted and every pin is completely straight so it doesn't catch on the PCB, the slot won't just fall off when it's heated enough, you'll probably have to pull on it a bit and there are a ton of tiny traces you might tear off the board if you aren't careful. At least that's the only way I could think to remove them, and from the sounds of Xian Xi's responce, that's about the only option.
 

daskrabs

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MV-1C boards are less than $50 on aliexpress and prob other places. Just sayin'.
 

Finch

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MV-1C boards are less than $50 on aliexpress and prob other places. Just sayin'.

Yes, but they are all pretty well used. I'd just be buying more and more of them until I got one with a better cartridge slot. That's where this one came from.
 

Jumpingmanjim

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Any luck with the bending? The thought of desoldering one of those things is giving me nightmares.
 

ledfrog

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I swapped one slot on my MVS 4 slot about a year ago. It was hell, but I just took it one pin at a time using a regular soldering iron and a solder sucker. Here’s a pic of my old one to show why I did the swap...some of the pins were set back and not making a good connection.

8C810DAE-374C-4A8F-BA66-01B34CB1B2FC.jpeg
 

Kujako

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I swapped one slot on my MVS 4 slot about a year ago. It was hell, but I just took it one pin at a time using a regular soldering iron and a solder sucker. Here’s a pic of my old one to show why I did the swap...some of the pins were set back and not making a good connection.

That looks like it was hard... I would be far too lazy to tackle that. I'm having a hard time working up the energy to think about replacing a Z80. I mean... do I REALLY need sound in game?
 

Finch

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I swapped one slot on my MVS 4 slot about a year ago. It was hell, but I just took it one pin at a time using a regular soldering iron and a solder sucker. Here’s a pic of my old one to show why I did the swap...some of the pins were set back and not making a good connection.

View attachment 52281

Well none of my pins look as bad as those do. I looked into bending them a bit as Jumpingmanjim suggested but as far as I can tell the spring mechanism in NG cart slots are way different, and more complex than a NES and I couldn't really find a way to bend them in a way that it seemed like it did anything. I tested on a dead MVS motheboard and visually, I couldn't tell any difference and other options seemed likely to damage the pins. I may try desoldering one of the dead boards and see what happens, I mean, I can't make them worse.

I'm mostly concerned that blasting the back of the board with a heat gun might heat up other stuff enough that some random part falls off or de-solders and I'll never even know it.
 

ledfrog

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What was weird about my slot is that the pins that were pushed back the most always sort of popped back into place when I put pressure on them and whatever game I put in there would work until it was either slightly moved or removed altogether. It was a never-ending battle of having to push the pins every time I switched games. So I ended up buying a replacement pair and fortunately only needed to install one of them. But honestly, I hated every second of it! I don't have a heat gun or de-soldering iron, so I'm not sure if either of these would have helped or made things worse.
 
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