As a collector I pick alot of used games up from pawn shops, most of these carts and cd's are filthy or have stickers plastered over their boxes... what do you use to clean them and help remove the stickers? Can anybody recomend a decent CD/DVD cleaning machine? My own pesonal horror story is buying what looked like a flood damaged atari 2600 for £2 and when I got home and opened it there was a huge spiders nest inside. Whats your worst?
For cleaning carts I use Qtips dipped in rubbing alcohol. Makes a lot of carts boot up. As for CD case. I take it apart, remove all the paper inserts and peel off the stickers. However, most of the time you get adhesive residue and end up having to use Goo Gone to remove it and that works well. After that I clean it up with Windex, helps in getting rid of the goo gone citrus smell off the case. I'd be more careful with CDs if they have a sticker on them. If you peel it off you might remove the protective film of the CD and thus destroy the game. This happened to me before... As for scratches on the bottom side of the CD, I wouild only use a game doctor if the CD is unreadable, but if it can boot up fine then just leave it be, remove any fingerprints from it, etc.
The above pretty much says it all, I'd just add that I got a cart cleaning kit from somewhere, which included cartridge slot cleaners. Made an amazing amount of difference to my SNES, even though my games were totally clean the cart slot was grubby. Used to be I'd have to reseat each game a couple of times before it would boot, and imports were a nightmare, now every game boots first time. Best couple of quid I ever spent on ebay.
Yeh. I remember blockbuster selling cart slot cleaners. Can't find those things anywhere anymore. Maybe ebay, I haven't checked yet. My Genesis/32x cart slot need a good cleaning.
I remember this kick ass cleaning kit SEGA had during the first Genesis years. It looked like a virtua racing cartridge, but then you opened it and it contained all this cool tiny brushes and cleaning solutions to clean cartridges, slots and the genesis unit. Too bad they discontinued it when the Gensis 2 came out:-(
I have a horror story. While working at Gamestop, a person brought in a very nasty looking PSX. It worked, so we had to take it. We kept shaking it, and crap just came out everytime. Finally tired of shaking it, my manager opened it up. Inside was a bunch of little cockroaches which skittered away as soon as the top was off. The insides of the Playstation were caked in cockroach crap. My manager immediately screwed it back together, marked it defective, and threw it in the defective box, never to haunt us again.
I found a NES back in 97 that was just like that PSX, kitty. Cockroachs seem to love white consoles (i think) Anyways, here's some shots of the Genesis Cleaning Kit: The cartridge What's inside it
Cockroaches, ugh. That is the nastiest thing I've ever heard. I have a lot of problems with dust getting all up on the inside of my consoles, usually that canned air dust remover stuff does the trick but it can be hard to get on the inside.
Nintendo released a very similar cart cleaner for the SNES. It looked like a standard cart, but opened up with a set of cleaning tools. I still have one, and it still works
To clean CDs there's nothing better than glasses cleaner spray!! I tell you, this stuff works like a dream. I clean all the CDs I sell with it. The cleaner can remove the stickiest of crap from a CD without damaging the disc at all. Remember to use a soft cloth to wipe the CD with. Yakumo
Q-tips and ammonia-free Windex does the job for me. So does rubbing alcohol. I've had to clean many a cart and system.
I want one of those carts. Those little plastic things are what I was talking about anyway, they work great.
