Best approach to fix bent pins on Memory Card slot on 2-25 cab

[Crowquill]

So now that a friend and I have Neo-Geo cabs I finally thought I'd try a memory card.

Discovered yesterday, though, that there are some bent pins. I got the worst one bent back mostly, but it's still a little curved. Any suggestions besides really tiny needlenose pliers? I don't think it's been bent back and forth enough that it'll break off.

I'm wondering if I should cut back some of the plastic to give me better access to them.

This is a pic of how it started.

 

[mikejmoffitt]

If you can move it back into the correct position, inserting a memory card firmly but carefully several times may straighten it out. I've tried straightening them by hand and only ever made them worse. Since it's just a PCMCIA socket, it may be replaceable.

 

[Apocalypse]

If you can move it back into the correct position, inserting a memory card firmly but carefully several times may straighten it out. I've tried straightening them by hand and only ever made them worse. Since it's just a PCMCIA socket, it may be replaceable.

Yeah just replace the connector.
Even if you manage to realign the pins they will be very weak then.

 

[Xian Xi]

It's a flipped connector by the way iirc. You can't use the normal PCMIA sockets.

 

[mikejmoffitt]

Ah, what a pain in the ass. Is there an easily found replacement connector?

 

[kuze]

Ah, what a pain in the ass. Is there an easily found replacement connector?

Nope, you have to take one from a parts board. That's what I ended up doing for my MV2F, took a card reader from a broken MV2.

 

[grendelrt]

I used tweezers to bend mine back and then shoved my NTM card in there and its never left since :O

 

[mikejmoffitt]

I've ordered a PCMCIA socket replacement from Digikey. I'm going to see how annoying it is to modify to be suitable, since the slot is very ruined on my MV2.

 

[buaku]

Good luck with that! That'd be awesome if you could figure it out. I tried that once and gave up pretty fast, but then again I'm not very patient and thought it would be easier to do.
I'm not sure the pins even lined up properly with what was on the board, and then there's the whole pin numbers not matching the PCMCIA numbering like XX said. Maybe it wouldn't be bad to make some sort of conversion board.

 

[Crowquill]

I was looking at how the pins go up the back of the socket, turn 90˚, and go through. Made me wonder if I could:
-pull that pin out the back (Don't know how easy it is to pull those through)
-Feed a solid wire back through or maybe better yet a cirmp-on d-sub pin
-solder the connection.

If it were more than one pin that was seriously bent, I might look into replacing the whole socket, but I'm going to try and patch it up first.