Recently I picked up a 5200. I also got several standard controllers, none of which worked 100%. When I first got the controllers, I took them all apart and cleaned the corrosion off the traces with an eraser. This restored them all to functionality. A month later, though, I found that I had to open some of them up again and repeat the procedure.

Is there anything I can do or should avoid doing so I won't have to take apart my 5200 controllers on a monthly basis? In particular, I was wondering:

1. Do I need to be super careful about avoiding touching the exposed traces with my fingers? Ditto for the carbon discs?

2. Should I be doing something to clean off the carbon discs that close the contacts as well?

3. Is that "gold dot" kit I see on ebay really much better than the stock buttons? I see that the gold only applies to the start/pause/reset buttons, but that the fire buttons have three smaller carbon discs rather than the one larger disc in the stock fire buttons. An ebay example: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=1949935472

4. Is the revision 9 flex circuit (or any revision of the flex circuit) much less prone to forming a corrosion layer on the traces?

I've read the 5200 faq at atarihq.com, so I understand that these controllers will require periodic maintenance over their lifetime, but I'm just wondering how I can minimize the frequency.