Problems with my Atari Jaguar (don't know what forum to post in)

Sorry in advance, I didn't see an atari forum or a general console trouble shooting forum.

Anyway, I bought a used jaguar which came with one controller back in 2005. It worked fine back then. I had two games for it, Kasumi Ninja and Val D'isere Skiing. Both games booted fine and I could play them no problem. Sometimes I'd get the red jaguar screen and the game wouldn't load, but this seems to be pretty common for jaguar consoles, and jiggling the cart and resetting seemed to work more often than not.


I used it very rarely for the next few years, but from around 2007 until now, I don't think I touched it at all. I stored it in a dry climate controlled area.

Now when I tried it out a few months ago, I've got two problems. Here are the symptoms of my problems:

1) Kasumi Ninja boots up maybe 1 out of every 5 tries (get red jaguar screen a lot), and Val D'isere won't boot up ever (red jag screen every time). So maybe the cartridge slot needs to be cleaned?

2) When Kasumi Ninja boots up (and the game seems to run properly... music plays and it goes through a demo loop, it's not crashing or hanging), I cannot "press fire" when prompted in order to go from the splash screen into the game menu. I thought maybe there was a problem with the controller or the controller port, but by pressing every button on the controller, I found I could do a soft reset of the console by pressing some of the telephone buttons. This controller not functioning situation happened every time I've been able to get Kasumi Ninja to boot up recently, so it wasn't just a one time fluke.

I don't have another jaguar controller to test things out. Could this controller issue be related to the cartridge slot needing to be cleaned as well?

I've never been hard on my equipment and the controller, the controller cable, the controller plug, and the controller port all look to the naked eye like they are in good shape. I don't see any corrosion on the cartridges or the cartridge slot on the console.

Where do I go from here?

 

An easy way to clean the cartridge contacts and cartridges is to clean the cartridges using a cotton bud (normal ones will do, but you can get proper head cleaning ones for VCRs and Tape decks) and some >70% pure rubbing alcohol, just rub the cotton bud firmly across the edge connector. Repeat until the cotton bud is clean, make sure that none of the cotton is one the cartridge port.

Whilst the cartridge edge connector is still wet with the rubbing alcohol, just plug the cartridge in and remove gentlely and firmly and repeat a few times and then leave to dry for an hour.

You should find it works, as the pins on the Jaguar cartridge port are quite thin I wuold not recommend shoving anything else in there in case you bend some pins.

 

eraser works well too but I always prefer the alcoholic cotton buds... Jag is problematic so I sold it, but AVP rules!

 

Alright thanks, I'll try to clean the cartridge slot. I hope that somehow fixes the controller bug too.

 

Check the 15 pin joypad connector make sure that none of the pins are bent or pushed in.

 

Q-tips and rubbing alcohol have repaired several of my old carts, controllers, and systems.