About letting cart into the consolle

[D]

The Saturn and swapping cartridges isn't really applicable.
If you're gonna play THAT game again, leave it in. If you're not, take it out. But there is strain on the pins when a cartridge remains inserted, so that's why I suggest taking it out then.
gently blow from time to time or carefuly open up the unit and remove dust & dirt.

[barakka]

But there is strain on the pins when a cartridge remains inserted

Can you explain how that is possible?:?

gently blow from time to time

That's not a good thing to do! Blowing* onto the connector causes oxidizing of the contacts.

* I'm talking about the human breath because I've seen that people does that, if you were talking about compressed air then it's OK.

[dpful]

It seems to me that you should leave the cart in to protect the pins from oxidation and dust. I've seen a lot of oxidized and dirty pins, but never worn out or bent pins.

[Ganelon]

But there is strain on the pins when a cartridge remains inserted

Can you explain how that is possible?:?

Constant pressure on soft metal will cause it to bend over time.

[matt]

Life is too short to worry about such things.

[barakka]

Constant pressure on soft metal will cause it to bend over time.

I doubt it, metal is subjected to mechanical fatigue only during the insertion/extraction of the cartridge.
Otherwise all the PCI/AGP/PCExpress connectors mounted on a PC motherboard should fail after a short time.

It seems to me that you should leave the cart in to protect the pins from oxidation and dust.

True, but if the cart and the connector pins are 2 different metals there could be oxidation caused by Galvanic corrosion.

[DC906270]

I remember racketboys saying that taking in and out too much the ram cart from the saturn would soon kill the cartridge slot...

i think this applies to when using one of those cheap, generic, non-sega ram carts, not when using the official sega ones...