exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I'm looking for tips to make my Falcon cartridge port work reliably.

It's a Falcon in a Space Case. There is an extender. I've cleaned and checked the extender, however ... going back to the source, the original port is iffy. If I put in the diagnostic cart I get a corrupt screen unless I apply pressure (up or down).

I reckon its either:
i) The pins are dirty
ii) The pins are bent

Would anyone have tips please on how to deal with these? A cotton bud is too big to fit for cleaning with isopropyl and I'm not sure how best to bend them back. I was thinking perhaps try to feed a wire behind?

I'm presuming they are slightly bent from years of pressure of this adaptor being plugged in.

Not sure I recall anyone trying to straighten out the pins before.

But in terms of cleaning, I just normally spray IPA on cartridge PCB and just insert it several times.. Clean the cartridge PCB and repeat a few times..

There is lint free medical swabs you can use made out of polyester. They fit and are flatter (than the normal cotton swabs) and can be used with IPA. If the cartridge it self doesn't get clean enough you can also use a normal eraser on the edge connector. I tried just now to insert a pin above and under the cartridge port pins and that works as well to bend them back a bit. I attached a photo with some red dots where I inserted the pin. Very little is needed so be careful not to over do it, otherwise it will be hard to insert the cartridge later on.

Thanks. I had a go at that and cleaning it with no real improvement.

I'm wondering if there is just a dry joint or something. So I tried to get the board out, but the Space Case is painful! All these soldered extensions everywhere which are easy to knock out. One for a weekend when I have lots of patience I guess.