Bugs and Videogames

[Porksta]

I was just remembering a letter that I read in an OXM about a guy who had some cockroaches living in his XBOX that got in via the controller ports. This got me thinking about bugs and videogames. All my video game stuff is in the basement, which gets its fair share of crickets and spiders. Can bugs actually do anything to your systems other than crapping in them or laying eggs? I wouldn't think they would damage the systems all too much, but I was just wondering if anybody had any methods or problems with their video games getting infested.

[Nostalgicblight]

I too have this concern. I reciently moved into a house smaller than my apartment I was once in, and I am sharing a room smaller than the one I had to myself with my 6 year old brother. (He doesn't take care of anything he has, including game consoles.) This left me with the only path I could take: pack all 25+ consoles into boxes and throw them in the garage.

There is an ant infestation in this garage, and the last visit I had made to the garage, I had found quite a few spiders crawling on the storage.

However, from my experiences from tenances of taking apart old consoles and cleaning them, I found that, aside from handhelds, there are some serious cobwebs and insect corpses in systems older than (I don't know, maybe about) five years. I recall finding webbing in a PSX, so my guess is that it is bound to happen. I don't believe that it harms the console, but I hate the thought of things crawling in my 2600 as we speak.

[FVJVMVP]

The first Atari VCS I picked up had a few nice suprises. In addition to the plethery of deceased mosquitoes, I found animal droppings and, I believe, a condom. Guess the controller was a quickshot (No pun intended... maybe...)

[XYXZYZ]

Perhaps extra large ziploc bags would be a good idea for storage?

[Moo Cow]

Somewhere in here, someone mentioned ants in the controller ports:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82887
So, apparently. Also, a colecovision + termites (although I'm not sure if it's actually wood)

[Nostalgicblight]

Perhaps extra large ziploc bags would be a good idea for storage?

Damn good idea; I'll keep that in mind. It will work for a lot of systems and accessories. (Giant ziploc bags, damn I'm stupid.) It seems so obvious now. I appreciate it.

As I read from a different forum, it also helps to keep systems and PCs off of the floor. Helps with dust buildup, too. In relevance, I do have a short story. About six months ago, my computer did something retarded, as my last two have done as well, and I requested the use of my mother's computer with a harddrive swap. Well... My room (and desk) is so effen' small that I had to put the PC on the floor. Put simply, the bottom of the front USB hub was pretty much an opening for the collecting of dust. Eventually (and sadly it only took about 3 months for) the dust to build up around the seemingly poorly soldered wires (factory, not my doing, yet looking back on my own ignorance) and lead to a severe overheating and further the hub melting it's way through the plastic. Smelled like chlorine, actually.

The moral of all of this: it is a real bitch to keep these things clean, but we wouldn't be here if it wasn't worth cleaning a 1977 2600 you got for $2 in a yard sale, right? You live, you learn. I just do it the hard way, apparently.

[Pantechnicon]

Somewhere in here, someone mentioned ants in the controller ports:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82887
So, apparently. Also, a colecovision + termites (although I'm not sure if it's actually wood)

That was me. The ants were actually inside some Colecovision controllers I had, not just the ports. They were long dead and their bodies were stuck to the number pad. Took a while to clean off their sticky dried guts with electronic degreaser but I got them working again.

I would think that it is at least theoretically possible for a large enough and dessicated insect carcass - say, a moth - to possibly ignite inside of a console case by accidentally shorting a path on a voltage regulator or somewhere where a lot of heat is dissipated. I've never heard of this happening. I'm just guessing it's possible.

[Steve W]

I was early to the Oklahoma Videogame Expo in 2005, so outside of Tulsa I stopped at a churchwide garage sale and bought a boxed Pong machine for five bucks. The box was filled with dead beetles. I haven't tried it out yet, because I was afraid of dead bugs inside the machine might short something out.

[Gandhara]

I used to buy hundreds of NES and Genesis carts from Funcoland back in the day through their phone mail orders. Many of the carts would be filled with spider webs, dead spiders/bugs and they were so dirty (found some with actual sand seeping out of the cracks.

These carts are extremely durable though. A thorough cleaning and they're good as new. No way a damn CD game could withstand that much. Most of the carts did work, although some were duds (broken connectors) and a few still don't work right. Funcoland probably didn't test many of the games or even care the condition they just stock used games up for selling them.