Tin plating was one of the biggest recalls with micor and later radios.? You could order contacts in bulk and
replace them as needed.? Big job.? For some radios they came up with gold plated contact replacement
kits that fixed it for good.? You would have to get lucky with NOS barn find.? A real big job for so many contacts,
but the only fix that lasts except for wiring jumpers around every contact that fails (I have seen this abomination).?
Many of the MSR cards are identical to the micor except for the edge connector.? It is too bad that the cards
are so reliable and robust EXCEPT for the edge connectors.
The tin plating will oxidate at the contact point over time and only wiping or scraping through will restore
for a time.? I always used 90% isopropyl and work the contacts.? I found out there could be problems with Silicone?
or "active" ingredients, especially any where near RF connectors, plastics or circuits.? If you can reach the pins,
you can scrape out the oxidized line where the contacts mated.? I don't know what is in Stabilant, and their SDS
doesn't say what the secret sauce is and I never used it before.? I have used DeOxit but you have to be real careful.?
If the sauce claims to be a contact enhancer, it probably has a weak acid or some other active ingredient.? You only?
know if it's safe after long term experiments.? Nothing really works better than replacing with gold.? Fast was most
important, so rather than tracing out the bad contact, we would just wet the card edge and work it and come back
in 6 months to do it again.
The external controller is a good way to go if you want some feature that just isn't in the stock setup.? My head
would spin to figure out how to integrate an external controller in such a way that I could unplug it and flip over
the cards in the cage and revert to stock without some fiddler blowing something up not understanding what
they were seeing.?
Many radios and TVs of the day suffered copy cat problems.? They all thought board swapping would be the wave
of the future, but contact service became the major service issue.? Mastr2 had some problems too.? The Quasar
"works in a drawer" TV became a joke.? We could get them working but there was so much flex in the chassis that
when we slid it all back together it would fail, or the ride back to the customer and it would fail.? Service people
would snicker and "never works in a drawer" and "quality goes out before the name goes on" would be muttered.?
I would surmise the design team was outvoted by the bean counter and advertising to the point of major FAIL.
Mot got out of the TV business completely and sold the Quasar name to a Japanese company.
