Strange problems

But in doing so, th solution could soak into the perf board and if it began to curode the pins, drying it wouldn't help cause it would still be in there. that's why I say only a little and then dry it and try it out. There's always that possiblity it could damage it if it sits there too long.

 

Corrosion doesn't happen immediately. It takes a long time for it to corrode. They make solutions 'specifically' for two things: to pick up dirt from the magnetic plates, and to prevent corrosion. Therefore, it is in his best interest I believe to let it sit there for about a minute, and then dry it completely.

If it were pure water, it'd be different, but alcohol solutions are ideal for protection from corrosion as long as you dry them sometime (doesn't have to be immediately).

 

The end pin isn't supposed to look like the others. It's cut a little shorter -- this is standard.

My fault -- but even so, the screen means that the game isn't being read correctly. In other words, if there is anything 'different', it's because it can't read a portion of the game correctly because of dirt. Also, do you have a 32X attached?

 

Yeah that's what I was talking about. And about that pin that doesn't look like the rest, describe it. It might be smaller than the rest and it's at one end of the board. That one is normal but if another pin is unusual then just describe what it looks like. And yes, clean any dust or durt you see.

EDIT: I need to learn to type faster.

 

You can, but I would use a really soft cloth instead. That's just a personal preference though.

 

Maybe the ROM chip got corrupted and has an incorrect checksum :P

I'm serious, you said S1 gets a red screen but S1&K (aka Blue Spheres) works fine, so it could be that...

Meh, I know bog all about how ROM is stored, and I doubt it is actually possible to corrupt ROM in an actual chip...

Why not just play S1 on an emulator?

 

You're welcome to try saxman's suggestion and leave a solution on the pins for about a minute. But be careful. You should examine the pins on the Genesis closer, but don't use the eraser method on it, the port will act as a cheese grader and you will never get the rubber out.

 

Sorry to double post. It is possible the chip (data) got messed up when that series of glitches happened. Chips can fry, it's a fact of computer life. And just because you get the spheres game doesn't mean everything is okay. I've put other games on besides sonic games and I've got the spheres game. It could be the chip is fryed, thus the S&K cart doesn't recognise it so it goes to the spheres game by default. Same could happen with bad checksum. Ether way, very bad. Or just keep trying to fix the problem and hope that its just a durty Genesis.

 

Is the system and/or game warm?

 

8-Bit Dragon

It means the checksum is ok. Dosn't S&K use the S1 checksum to tell if its S1? that's probably why some other games work, they could have the same checksum?

But im only going from memory... memory that has been cleaned 3 or 4 times... :lol:

 

I doubt it. Most likely it reads $200120 to see what the game name is. One could test that by putting a cartridge with an EEPROM containing any old game modified to have the same name as Sonic 1 into the SnK slot.

 

Is almost what quickman said.Well, it actually checks the serial,and compare it with the serial in $200180.It checks 4 serials: Sonic 2 ver 00 ($3c0) ver 01 ($3ce) and ver 02 ($3dc), Sonic 3 ($3ea).If none of then are in $200180,then it jumps to the blue spheres part.There it checks for sonic 1 (usa: $4ccfe and jap: $4cd0b) (and you know what it does after that)

Well,is just something to point that the checksum isn't checked.

 

You know, this used to happen a lot whenever we'd try to play a Bart Simpson game. It was something about him falling asleep while doing his homework. You had to collect like seven or eight pages of homework, all while keeping Bart asleep to win the game. (Not like I ever did; most pages I ever collected was four.)

Anyway, the point is, we kept on having the same problems that you're describing right now, Trigahd. How'd we fix it? We didn't. We could never figure out why it wouldn't work. Now that I see what's happening to you, my best guess is that we'd play it so long, hours on end, that we fried the chip without realizing it.

If this is the case, then I don't know what to tell you, Trigahd, except to try and get another Sonic 1 cart. The good thing is, if you do need to do that, you can easily find it for no more than ten bucks, whether it's via eBay or your local trade-in game store. (you can pick up a used, though it's my personal preference that you don't—I picked up a used Mega Memory Card and GameShark, both for the GameBoy Color. Both stopping working properly after one hour of gameplay, each. GameStop didn't accept refunds, so I had to settle for GameBucks instead.)

In any event, I hope that you are able to play Sonic 1 without any defects.

 

I've never had that happen. I used to play my Sega for hours on end and none of my games ever overheated or fryed. Perhaps he had the game on during a power surge or power fluctuation. I remember that happened once with my DC. The lights flickered for just a moment (no more than a second) and POP! Luckily I'm good at fixing electronics and computers and I was able to fix it.

 

That happened to the lightbulb in my lamp. I walked into my room and flipped the switch so the light would go on, and then POP! The lightbulb fizzled and smoked and then glass broke. Good thing I was still in the doorway, because I didn't get hit with the glass shards.

But yeah, we've played video games while the lights were flickering. It's only that Bart Simpson cart that's screwed up, though. None of the others require me blowing into the cart for an hour, or wiping the pins a hundred times. It takes a lot before we can play that game. Of course, we can't play any Genesis games after Mom went and dropped it! I swear, she's not allowed to touch the GameCube, EVER. :P

 

I would recommend NOT blowing your carts. Over time, the moisture in your breath CAN have an adverse effect, however miniscule. Use a good cart and system cleaner, if you have to, take the cart and system apart to gain better access to the edge connector and cart port. There was actually a heavy discussion over at one of the retrogaming sites about whether or not blowing was good - and while it was primarily an NES discussion, the general consensus was that blowing was NOT a good idea in the long run. Hell, noone could even decisively determine why blowing even works in the first place, other than the obvious possibility that you're merely blowing dirt off. This issue also came up on the official Nintendo forums.