Why do cartridges die? Micro Machines 96 stopped working all of the sudden.

Silly me. I was thinking in my head a picture of the EPROM from my Megadrive cartridge. It does not have the window on it for UV because SEGA got sealed units I am assuming.

 

Those are Maskroms in retail carts... not eprom or eeprom.

You can get OTP eproms that have no window, but retail carts wont be those most of the time.

 

With both games, the easiest solution is to open them up and take a look. Keep an eye out for patches of board that look different to the rest of the board, components that waggle, and smoldering molten lumps of plastic that was once a chip or capacitor. This goes double of the Micro Machines cart due to it's J-Cart functionalities. Basically, if there's anything filthy, clean it off with IPA or something similar, if there's loose components get a soldering iron and resolder them, and if there's any broken traces on the board get a conductive pen and try to fill in the gaps. Also, if the cart has a battery backup, you may as well replace it whilst you're here.

Mostly carts die due to:

* poor storage earlier in life (causing the copper to oxidise and components to 'rust')
* the battery dying (which can not only prevent some carts from starting, but the contents of a dead battery is evil and can cause damage)
* blown capacitors in special carts (which may be the case in a J-Cart, but I have yet to encounter that issue)
* crud build-up within the cartridge

You may also want to take the board out completely and use a rubber to make sure the contacts are sparkly clean too. Finally, try and find another console (say a friends or a cheapie spare) and check to make sure it's not your console being uppity.

It might be a ROM chip that's gone bad, but the other 4 issues are far, far more likely.

Hope that helps.

 

Hair and crap could be in the cart solt of the mega drive most mega drive have all sorts of dirt in the cart solt's once clean should be fine the j carts use torx bits under the label.
Can i ask once all mega drive carts die how can we reprogramm the games back on to them some how with a eprom or something?