Originally published at: Evidently blowing on video game cartridges did not help | Boing Boing
…
4 Likes
It’s just part of the ritual, like Outkast’s approach to instant photography.
22 Likes
I remember owning an Atari 2600 when I was kid. For whatever reason people called the cartridges “tapes”, and very early on I dismantled one of the cartridges and found it contained a small PCB with a microchip mounted on it. The bottom edge of the board had a series of metal contacts and fit nicely into the small slit on the console.
4 Likes
Ha! This reminded me of Andy Hertzfeld’s story about hot swapping an Apple II Disk Controller card into a running Apple ][.
Cliff told me that he could insert a disk controller card into Burrell’s Apple II with the power still on, without glitching it out, a feat that I thought was miraculous - you’d have to be incredibly quick and steady not to short-circuit any of the contacts while you were inserting it, running the risk of burning out both the Apple II and the card. But Cliff said he’d done it many times before: all that was required was the confidence that you could actually do it. So I crossed my fingers as he approached Burrell’s Apple like a samurai warrior, concentrating for a few seconds before holding his breath and slamming the disk card into the slot with a quick, stacatto thrust.
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Scrooge_McDuck.txt
4 Likes
Yep, I figured it didn’t really do anything, but you had to do it anyway. 
We only did it with NES carts. I never had to do anything with Atari VCS (Atari 2600 for you noobs) carts as they always seemed to just work. I never heard anyone call them tapes, but if I had to guess it might be because the person was familiar with 8-track tapes.
5 Likes
We were always so careful to turn the 2600 off to prevent damaging the cartridges when inserting/removing them, to the point of paranoia. Is there any possibility that this was a myth?
3 Likes
I’ve removed and inserted carts while the Atari was on and never had anything bad happen. I was usually trying to see if it would create any interesting glitches like the Space Invaders double shot power glitch. That one is well known, right? We used to do it all the time back in 1978.
6 Likes
It just seemed like the logical thing to do.
2 Likes
Maybe it didn’t work on Atari, but it definitely worked on the Intellivision cartridges. 
5 Likes
That’s actually based on something though. The earliest Polaroid films you had to peel after they were shot to develop/reveal the image. The surface was still wet and gently shaking or waving to dry it was common.
It just stuck around well after they came up with better, self contained self developing films.
9 Likes
no it didn’t, but you know what did help? Breathing on them. It would ‘wet’ the contacts and make a better connection. To this day I swear it worked.
5 Likes
Nobody was blowing on Atari 2600 cartridges… those just worked and the blowing thing was purely NES dealing with their shit cartridge slot design. Just taking it out and putting it back in was likely enough.
6 Likes
I think it was the 10NES chip that really caused the problem
4 Likes
I bought a modded GameBoy SP with IPS screen (which looks AMAZING by the way) off Etsy
and surprisingly with some of the old GBA carts I bought off eBay, some of them had trouble booting, I got the garbled Nintendo logo, which is a neat story in itself:
I had to clean the contacts (both cart and GB) with isopropyl alcohol on a Q-Tip and then it was fine. There was visible dirt on the Q-Tip after I did this. I don’t think any amount of blowing would have fixed this one 
6 Likes
It’s always the DRM.
DRM is the reason most modern tech is shitty.
4 Likes
We also used to threaten ou Brotkasten, as we called th C64, with a screwdriver when loading a datasette made any troubles. And look what it did.
It brought me to text-screaming at random strangers on the internet because I have unresolved issues with reality. Same effect as blowing on a cartridge.
6 Likes
I watched the whole video, and there was a sum total of zero evidence presented. It’s certainly a reasonable position that blowing does nothing. It’s also a reasonable position it does. Until more evidence is presented, I’m withholding judgement.
4 Likes
Atari (as well as other commercial systems of the time, like my old TRash-80) used cassettes for data I/O and expansion.
4 Likes
Frogger got a pretty cool glitch if you did that. The music goes all weird and high pitched, and what looks like a safe area to jump on just might just kill you. After you’ve mastered a game regularly, you start messing with it. Believe we called it Crazy Frogger.
3 Likes
Can confirm. My step-grandad had an early Polaroid camera, like we see in vintage cinema. Even with horrible, debilitating arthritis that turned his hands into twisted fists, he could operate the thing like a pro.
3 Likes
