Atari 7800 Cartridge Repair

[AtariBytes]

My BasketBrawl cartridge loads as far as the "ATARI" title screen then within a few seconds there's just static and wiggly lines. No visible damage or dirt on the cart exterior? Thoughts? Thanks!

[RickR]

Hello:  Your best bet is to clean the cartridge edge pins with q-tips and alcohol.  Dip the q-tip in alcohol and wipe both sides of the card edge.  Repeat with a clean q-tip until no more black residue comes off. 

[nosweargamer]

My BasketBrawl cartridge loads as far as the "ATARI" title screen then within a few seconds there's just static and wiggly lines. No visible damage or dirt on the cart exterior? Thoughts? Thanks!

 

Has it ever worked? I just want to make sure it isn't a PAL copy.

Also, make sure you have a two button 7800 controller hooked up.

Some 7800 games won't boot up if you don't have a 7800 controller connected.

[CrossBow]

I had a Scrapyard Dog that did this very thing along with an F-14 Tomcat for the 7800 that started doing this just about a month after I got it. I ended up exchanging it for a copy of F-18 instead bitd. Anyway, my understanding is that some of these later made 7800 games actually were done using eproms instead of masked roms. As such many of them technically have a limited lifespan. I don't know about Basket Brawl specifically but I know that many of the Absolute and Activision 7800 games were made this way. You can kinda tell by looking into the cart edge end. If you look carefully you can usually make out the hex inverter chip that is installed to be able to use the eproms in them.

[AtariBytes]

Thanks for the tips. Will report back with my results.