Why Does Blowing Into A Video Game Cartridge Make It Work?

[Little Red Wagon Repairman]

I Googled this and Google said it was false. Google said I could be making the cart worse by blowing saliva into it. I only blow dry air from my mouth. It works. Google is full of hooey. If a cartridge is in really bad shape you may need some *******.

 

[D-rock]

I imagine blowing dry air from ones mouth would be hard baring being a mummy or some similar creature.

 

[whalers90]

myth - this BS never worked

 

[Little Red Wagon Repairman]

myth - this BS never worked

I can put the cart in and take it out over and over with nothing happening. When I blow into it it works. Maybe my coffee breath wakes up the cart. Too much coincidence to be coincidence though.

 

[D-rock]

There's thinking out there that the moisture from your breath can increase conductivity. I don't know how efficient it actually is or if it's actually true, but it still probably isn't good for the long term health of a cartridge. It's probably better to just keep them clean and free from corrosion from the beginning.

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

It works, and works well. Heat causes expansion of metals and material. Moisture helps conductivity. I agree, in the long term, prolly not the best for the system and game, but it obviously works.

I had the best technique but now I also need a new 72 pin connector now, a million years later, and I'm sure that all that spit didn't help.

 

[Steve-FreeOnes]

myth - this BS never worked

commandowrong.gif

 

[Little Red Wagon Repairman]

It works, and works well. Heat causes expansion of metals and material. Moisture helps conductivity. I agree, in the long term, prolly not the best for the system and game, but it obviously works.

I had the best technique but now I also need a new 72 pin connector now, a million years later, and I'm sure that all that spit didn't help.

Adam, that is the best and most thoughtful answer to that coincidence/non-coincidence I have ever seen.

Hope you got those Everdrive Packs I posted the link for. People were prowling around for those. Smokemonster puts out some great ROM packs.

 

[D-rock]

It works, and works well. Heat causes expansion of metals and material. Moisture helps conductivity. I agree, in the long term, prolly not the best for the system and game, but it obviously works.

I had the best technique but now I also need a new 72 pin connector now, a million years later, and I'm sure that all that spit didn't help.

I'll admit that I blew into a lot of cartridges when I was a lot younger to get them to work. Anecdotally it did seem to work at the time, but then again given the small sample size it wasn't like I could have known whether that was the real cause or if it was just some placebo effect from me wanting to believe that and just random chance from taking it out and putting it back into the console until the game finally started. It would be interesting to do a scientific study where you can get thousands of them to get a good sample of actual results.

What was weird though is that my ******** and I were never told about the blowing into it trick, it was just something that seemed natural when we were little ****. Or maybe it was just desperation because there wasn't really any other thing to do with a troublesome cartridge at the time and there wasn't much to lose.

It does makes sense in some ways though, but I would be lying if I said I knew what the actual answer was any more than half-ass hypothesising if it actually works or not. Still I wish I was smart enough back then to just use high concentration ******* and a swab instead of just doing something that was going to quicken the problem of them not working. When you a young *** though you just want it to work and don't think about that stuff. I also didn't think about how much I would like those things to work for myself decades down the road. My parents while unusually cool at the time with letting their **** do the video game stuff weren't actually tech savvy themselves so didn't know enough to tell us to not do that.

 

[tvstrip]

I was always under the impression that you were blowing out dust & other junk that was affecting connectivity. I'm glad I didn't think it was the moisture, otherwise as a *** I might have thought of putting even more wetness into it...