Im going to be replacing my 72 pin connector here soon. Im getting tired of wigginling carts around to get them in the best position to start stuff up. I guess i should probably throougly clean all my carts.

I used to just put a little 91% alocohol on a qttip and rub them but looking around i see a lot of people claiming thats bad for the cart somehow. Is that true? does alcohol damage teh contacts? i wouldnt' see why.

what should i use if alcohol isn't a good bet? I looked over at http://www.nintendorepairshop.com/ where im getting my connector and bit for taking carts apart. They have some paste and wipe down solution. I have a feeling thats just overpriced junk you could buy in a store. I hear the solution is just alcohol anyway

theres a couple videos i found that looked interesting. One i found linked from NES forums. It recomends using something called weimans cooktop cleaner, but i dont know where to get that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4zWItM0rcI&playnext_from=TL&videos=M7u0ABJWuuE

the other i just found and its kinda the same thing but recomends brasso brass polish. He also totally disasembles the carts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEqhgTqvV0Y&playnext_from=TL&videos=RlopYPHAZEk

that guy also says not to use alcohol.

Im confused, i really dont know what to do. WHat do you guys suggest? What i really need to know is if alcohol really hurts the contacts.

The thing is most of my games aren't very dirty. They probably just have a bit of dust and maybe a tiny bit of grime on them from storage. they were kept ina  plastic container in the house (not in a garage) There are a couple used games i have that i never really used that probably need a good scrubbing though.

I do have some good electronic contact cleaner, but that comes in a spray can and seems to dry really fast

so any suggestions? what should i use? If im replacing the 72 pin i want all my stuff squeeky clean, but i dont want to damage it

It does say not to on the back of NES cartridges and on newer ones with a save battery like kirby's adventure it says “this game pak must be cleaned regulary use the NES cleaning kit only.” I don't know how much the original cleaning kits are online or if they are even available anywhere now though.

well i tested it with a few different methods after getting my bit to open them up. I opened up 2 old used games that were coroded and gunky, and 1 of my own personal games that i took care of that actually looked pretty much new

First i tried just alcohol on teh 2 dirty ones.. it didn't do much. It cleaned them up a bit but not much. Then i tried the erasor method: with a good quality art eraser. That actually worked pretty good on one of the cruddy ones, but the 2nd one had scratches and was worst off. Finally I tried Weimans cooktop cleaner on one of the messy ones, and the solution mixture you get from nintendorepairshop on the other.

Between the two weimans worked better. It didn't take off very much of the gold plating and cleaned it up quite well.

the nintendoreparishop solution took off quite a bit of the gold on the contacts: a few almost looked silver

weimans is pretty damn good stuff

I would probably recomend using a good erasor first, then falling back to the weimans if that doesn't work

For games that are just a bit dirty some 91% alcohol and a q tip on a disasembled cart works great. Or some electronic cleaner spray. I tried both and they seemed to work about the same

just thought id share my personal experience with you guys

I heard that over time the alcohol cleaners are bad for the games.  Although when I brought in my NES years ago, they recommended it to clean cartridges so I don't know.

We use Brasso at work to clean audio patch cords and it works amazing.  It should work well on an NES cartridge, but I know it is corrosive and you do need to wash your hands after so it might do more harm then good on your games.

I would choose rubbing alcohol over brasso since it is less corosive.

Best of luck.

Use Alcohol. It won't hurt the games. The official cleaning kit used, ALCOHOL.

Also, break the connector pin for the 10NES chip as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Galee-GCTqo

i heard about brasso, but suposedly that actually takes a good bit of the gold plating off so i didn't try it. I found the weinmans to be the best for really gunky ones

for just slightly dity, with my experience, i would use just alcohol on a disasembled cart (make sure you use the other end to dry it off)

for stuff with a bit of gunk on it, a good quality art erasor (i used a german brand.. steisomething, i forgot the exact name. it was a white plastic high quality art one) works really great and hardly leaves any flakes.

if its REALLY corroded and grungy i would probaly use weinmans and then wipe it off with some alcohol afterwards, then dry it.

brasso may work, but id imagine it would take a bunch of the gold off, like the nintendo repair kit stuff did from nintendorepairshop

I recently had this discussion with the owner of a classic games store, and he said to use ammonia and Q-tips.  I'd read somewhere to use Windex, but he said, don't bother with that, just get a $2 jug of ammonia and go to town.  Which was stinky and hard to find (Home Depot doesn't carry it, but our grocery store did).

We did that with our games, and I haven't had a single problem with them since.  Very impressive. :)

I figure it's his livelihood, he's been at it for 20 years, so if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

I use isopropryl which evaporates in a minute or two cleaning the metal and plastic without causing any damage.