Fixing a cartridge?

[vicassembly]

I have the Vic-20 Donkey Kong cartridge and when it attempts to run it shows a blue border at times. At times it might show Press F1 to start.

Nevertheless it does not work. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? What does it sound like? A connector pin being lost? Connector pins needing to be cleaned?

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Jonathan

[nbla000]

Connector pins needing to be cleaned?

I think that this is the problem, very common for old Vic cartridges, try to clean it.

[Vic20-Ian]

I give some of my carts a light going over with Scotch Bright (kitchen scouring nylon pad) to remove oxide, that works.

Check you Vic port does not have a bent pin.

[vicassembly]

Cleaning did not help. I tried the scotch bright technique and I even added some gentle cleaning liquid.

I opened the cartridge and it looks like all the pins are there and nothing is broken. I would have assumed this to be the case since the cartridge tries to run and aborts in various places. It does the same thing on multiple Vic-20s.

It appears to run to different places at different times. Sometimes the "Press F1" key shows and other times it simply shows a colored border.

Any other thoughts?

[robinsonmason]

Obvious perhaps, but I thought I had a bad Mole Attack cart and was ready to donate it to the Denial community, then found that it just took some elbow grease to get the darn cart in correctly. The VIC-20 cart port has to be one of the toughest to insert a cart into correctly and completely... I hate the sound of plastics squeaking as I struggle to insert one.

And that's why the Mega Cart is such a great idea.

[Vic20-Ian]

Try removing the cart from the case, clean both sides and then insert without the case. It might go in further and eliminate that potential cause. I have had this with one cart where the internal stop was a little broken and the cart skews in the slot.