Can Xstation cause cheat cartridges to fail booting?

[kalm_traveler]

Just as the title says - I'm trying to troubleshoot a SCPH-5501 that I recently overhauled and modded to keep.

RePSX PSU
full recap (console5 kit)
Retro Gem
Xstation

I have 2 GameShark Pro carts, a 3.1 and a 3.2, both of which seem to work just fine on some other 5501 boards I have, but I was stupid and didn't test *this* exact board until I had already done all the modding work.

Neither cart will boot on it - usually it just ignores them and goes straight to the XStation menu, occasionally the system will freeze at the Sony logo on bootup.

As for the port itself, I don't see any obvious signs of damage or corrosion on the pins or the connector body.

Has anyone else had the XStation prevent a parallel port cheat cartridge from working?

If that shouldn't be a thing, beyond looking at the solder joints on the pcb, what else could I do for troubleshooting a bad port?

 

[kalm_traveler]

just in case anyone finds this in the future running into the same issue -

I cleaned the PIO port on the Playstation by soaking a paper towel cut to the width of the port pin section in distilled white vinegar and let it sit for 25 mins, then dumped a bunch of 99% IPA in there and scrubbed it out with a toothbrush.

Then I cleaned both GameSharks bare PCBs with IPA and scrubbed out their PIO port connectors. Voila both are working as expected now - they load before Xstation.