Jerry's Shit Shack

[JerryTerrifying]

Here are some pictures of all my junk.  I like looking at shit like this so naturally I want to share shit like this.

[JerryTerrifying]

Fuck, I need to take new pictures.  This shit is way out of date.

[Balzak802]

Are you going to also make a video showing off your collection as it is now. Asking because I just saw your console collection video again from 3 years ago and it looks to be pretty outdated with the collection you mention on the podcast.

[JerryTerrifying]

I was going to make a new room video a while ago...around the time these pictures were taken.  I'm sure I'll get around to doing that once I get a new PC set up.

[JerryTerrifying]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK1YC1tvFx0

Here's an updated look at my shit shack.

[78strider]

The Tower of Power!

[JerryTerrifying]

Aye it's an impressive sight to behold.

[mechaMenace]

Do you still keep carts in your cartridge slots when not in use?

Back in the Funco days, I remember the employees told us that could cause corrosion or wear down the cartridge slot faster. I think this was in the Sega Genesis-SNES era. I don't know if the warning has any merit. I assumed so since they probably saw a lot of consoles with problems working in a game store. I don't think it's right to dismiss the idea because they were GS before GS or because I didn't know what kind of background they had.

This question reminds me of 'CDRs ruin the laser of your console' before that was debunked.

[AlexSwingle]

The cartridge thing is a myth. It doesn't follow physics. Contact pins wear down through abrasion and normal derogation of PCB. PCB takes about 20-30 years before it starts to make a difference and it realistically takes 80ish years to see warping from age, but frequent abrasion from removing and inserting cartridges is an easy way to wear them out. Even then, my NES lasted 15 years of inserting cartridges and I got rid of mine before I could see the loader fail. Cartridges tend to go bad before the cartridge slot itself because once again, physics are in charge with the slot being stable while the downward force has more abrasion being done to the cartridge. You can replicate this with firmly holding an egg in one hand and smashing another egg into it. Majority of the time, the egg moving into the stable egg breaks.

The only downsides to keeping a cart in the slot are the possibilities of the console falling where the inserted cartridge is leveraged as a wedge to damage the slot as well as expose the PCB to air due to the dust/air cover no longer limiting exposure. Regardless, it does happen, but occurs so late in the hardware's use that it will have been recycled or thrown away by the time it is noticed. An example are the computers from the 1950s still being functional without replacing the parts. Everything should be broken if the advice was true. Modern hardware has more points of failure like spinning metal plates for a hard drive that will break down significantly faster than the motherboard it is attached to.

[mechaMenace]

That's good to read. I do notice that NES read better when I clean the contacts on their motherboards into which the 72pin connector slides. Those pins seem to get some black stuff on them even though they are in constant contact with the 72pin and there should be no exposure to air. I clean mine once or twice a year.

[AlexSwingle]

The black stuff is copper oxidation in reaction to bacteria floating around the environment. The bulk of Nintendo products use copper pins and it doesn't require much airflow to cause bacterial plague on the pins. I've sold several GBA games where the buyer complained it didn't read, but when I instructed them to clean the loader's contacts, they worked. The dust/air cover for the NES just limits exposure and doesn't prevent the ease at which the pins collect dead bugs. Gold-plated pins don't suffer from this.

I mostly know this stuff from my experience as an electrician. I've never really seen it in real life.

[JerryTerrifying]

Most of the time yeah I leave the carts in. I've heard all the wives tales about this and that but I tend to leave a game in until I've beat the game or move onto something else.