Memblers wrote:
I've heard several people say that boiling an NES connector in water works really well to clean it. Though I'd say to use distilled water.
That's what they say, they also say boiling them re-aligns the pins to factory. I have personally done this method numerous times. One time I pulled 10 systems apart and went down the line and boil/baked them all.
Now for my controversial process. Doing multiple testings I have found that boiling and baking serves barely any advantage unless you use a metal polisher like Brasso on the board pins. Like I said controversial lol. Yes this does remove the plating but I have found that by doing this and coating the pins w/deoxit gold, it gives you a system that works 100 times better. Don't forget to disable the lock-out while you are at it.
As far as the pins re- aligning that's complete bs. The main problem w/these old pins is the edges get spread far apart and I have boil and baked at least 20-30 pins and have never had a pin close the gaps on the edges once yet and as such they never perform as they need to.
I finally turned to new pins which work great. Yes they have a death grip and that grip is probably why they work so well. They scrape through the last 30 years of oxidation on the main board to get a good connection. Just like my results using Brasso, they pretty much do the same thing.
In my opinion you are wasting time boiling and baking. People still like to take original pins and tediously bend the edge pins back and you can do that if you like but I never had good results though.