Repairing badly damaged connector edge pins on a game cart.

So that's how your finger turns gold...

 

The epoxy seems to be hard and well set. I will try smooth it out this evening.

Stay tuned:
Will the ghetto repair work or fail miserably?
Drum roll..

 

Howdy ho!
Now let me show you what happened to the cart through pictures.

Cart initially had 2 gold teeth with broken continuity and at least 2 more that looked like they should not but still miraculously had.
So I repaired those 4 only.

Here is the rough epoxy.



Here after I made a quick work of filing it flat. Then finished with ultra fine steel wool.
Felt smooth to the touch, even though it does not quite look pretty. But more importantly, multimeter tells me continuity is good.




The cured and sanded epoxy is light gray so it is hard to see on the similar plastic color.
Here is a macro view of the patch on the most damaged pins.
It feels smooth to the touch and had no difficulty inserting the cart in a top loader famiclone. ( SR3 )




Next thing you know, game works on first try
Played til level 26 and no hitch.
So there you have it, survivalist style gold finger repair.

 

Like!

 

You just used epoxy? or epoxy + solder?

 

Great job! I was skeptical that would work. Was thinking the epoxy would just fall off in the cart slot. Hopefully it stays attached long term.

 

I never doubted it would work. Issue is, I dont think it will last and you will likely damage the cart slot.

 

I used a special conductive epoxy. It is made for repairing electronics. I had bought that a while ago to fix broken carbon pad traces, since you cannot use normal solder on those carbon traces.

As for durability, I think it will be fine as long as it does not completely crack or chip off, I do not think surface wear will affect the repair.
As to damage to cart slot, maybe, that is in part why I first tried it in a famiclone I did not really care about. But then what kind of damage?
-Bent pins: Inserting/removing the cart did not feel any harder than a regular cart so I do not think so.
-Worn pins: It is hard to say, the epoxy feels like plastic to the touch but that does not mean much. The question would be: does the gold plating of a cart pin wears faster when rubbing against another gold finger or a block or epoxy?
-Dirt: Dust from the epoxy soiling the pins or the machine. My feeling is that this will be rather negligible but who knows.

It is a pity I find the game rather boring and likely wont be playing it much, I am curious to see how such a repair would evolve with regular use.

 

The epoxy will wear much faster than the original contacts. Contaminating the cart slot (conductive powder = no good!).

Good for dumping a game thats damaged or something like that. But not something I would use for actually playing it imo.