I need this

[John Connor]

Response:

Dear MythBuster Fan, Thanks so much for getting in touch! Right now we're really busy busting myths so we can't reply to individual emails - sorry! But we greatly appreciate you writing in and when we get a chance to go through our inbox, we'll get in touch if we've got any follow up questions. In the meantime, question everything and trust no one! Long live science, Team MB

 

[Red Squirrel]

Myth submitted to Mythbusters. Just for the hells of it. If they do make a segment about this I think they should get permission from Robot Chicken to show this clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW7jkgOguZI

I have a felling they may have to do a lot of blowing. ^_^

Knowing them, they'll setup some kind of rig with an air compressor to figure out the minimum blowing required, and of course, the maximum until it just breaks the cartridge. There will be lot of questionable language during the whole episode. "So Kari got us a box of NES cartriges, we blew her box at all the various pressure levels, and found that it was in fact very effective, however I should note that you should never exceed 250 PSI"

 

[CZroe]

Since when is that a myth. I always thought blowing in it did help as a kid, figured it was dust or something. But then later on it was determined it did not do anything, so now you're saying it actually DID help? This better be in one of the last episodes of mythbusters.

Kinda like blowing on food after it falls on the ground, not sure if that really does anything to blow off the germs it may have picked up off the floor but I STILL do it. lol.

Since fancy-pants people pretending to teach science lied to us and got you and John Connor to spread it. Example: Smug PBS guy fails to test his dumba$$ assertion before using it as an example to teach about confirmation bias.

I sub that channel anyway but... JESUS! What a freakin' easy thing to test! How could they get that wrong?!

...so now you're saying it actually DID help?

That's exactly what he's saying.

 

[CZroe]

I remember hearing my tidbit about the top loader back in like '92.

What you probably heard was Nintendo's PR campaign where they tried to tell people not to blow in game paks because it promotes corrosion and gets contamination in the connectors. IOW: They were trying to blame users for their design flaw. It was a cop-out, plain and simple. I mean, I don't doubt that the moisture from your breath can cause corrosion, which is why you need to keep cleaning them, but the fact is that the games often simply DON'T WORK on a worn connector without blowing and WORK when blown. The last time I checked, "WORKING but getting dirty" was better than "clean but NOT WORKING."

I recall an early '90s pamphlet with the drawing of a dude's head blowing into a game pak. There was a circle with a slash over it with the text "Don't blow in game paks, man." I believe it was an advertisement for Nintendo Authorized Service and Repair centers. We didn't have home phone service back then so I called them up from a payphone (still remember the phone number: 1-800-255-3700) and asked why you shouldn't blow into game paks. Their CSR explained the moisture/corrosion and contamination thing. They did not try to claim that blowing didn't help/affect the success of booting like the idiots today are claiming.

 

[John Connor]

Very interesting. http://mentalfloss.com/article/12589/did-blowing-nintendo-cartridges-really-help

 

[John Connor]

What you probably heard was Nintendo's PR campaign where they tried to tell people not to blow in game paks because it promotes corrosion and gets contamination in the connectors. IOW: They were trying to blame users for their design flaw. It was a cop-out, plain and simple. I mean, I don't doubt that the moisture from your breath can cause corrosion, which is why you need to keep cleaning them, but the fact is that the games often simply DON'T WORK on a worn connector without blowing and WORK when blown. The last time I checked, "WORKING but getting dirty" was better than "clean but NOT WORKING."

I recall an early '90s pamphlet with the drawing of a dude's head blowing into a game pak. There was a circle with a slash over it with the text "Don't blow in game paks, man." I believe it was an advertisement for Nintendo Authorized Service and Repair centers. We didn't have home phone service back then so I called them up from a payphone (still remember the phone number: 1-800-255-3700) and asked why you shouldn't blow into game paks. Their CSR explained the moisture/corrosion and contamination thing. They did not try to claim that blowing didn't help/affect the success of booting like the idiots today are claiming.

I don't recall them saying not to blow into the cartridge. It was just something I heard that they fixed the issue with a top loader and when Super never had the issue I thought they were right.

 

[Ichinisan]

My brother is getting his pants on. We'll test it right now...

 

[John Connor]

 

[Ichinisan]

My brother is getting his pants on. We'll test it right now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8sxacNnGD8 :awe:

 

[John Connor]

Interesting. What do you think of this? http://mentalfloss.com/article/12589/did-blowing-nintendo-cartridges-really-help

 

[CZroe]

Interesting. What do you think of this? http://mentalfloss.com/article/12589/did-blowing-nintendo-cartridges-really-help

Did you even read it? He concludes that blowing did nothing when EVERY SINGLE ONE of his sources, including Nintendo themselves, talked about it being a corrosion/contamination issue. Only ONE even mentioned that there might be a placebo effect and even that one followed up that possibility with this one:

2.) The moisture that occurs when you blow into a cartridge has some type of immediate effect on the electrical connection that occurs. Either the moisture helps to eliminate/move any debris/chemical buildup that has occurred when the contacts and the pin-readers rub together, or the moisture increases conductivity to a degree that it can send the data through any existing matter that was previously interfering with the connection. Those are my best theories."

:hmm:

Looks to me like he set out to prove an assumption and then made the claim with ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORTING EVIDENCE!

So, dear readers, all signs point to no: blowing in the cartridge did not help. My money is on the blowing thing being a pure placebo, offering the user just another chance at getting a good connection. The problems with Nintendo's connector system are well-documented, and most of them are mechanical -- they just wore out faster than expected.

 

[Ichinisan]

Want answers? Can't talk to someone that has tested or experimented? Then test it yourself.

The guy writing the Mentalfloss article failed to do that. The person on the PBS video failed to do that. Now, the Mentalfloss guy is benefiting from his misinformation and being cited by countless others on the Internet.

 

[John Connor]

For myself. Back in the day it was always hit and miss blowing into the cartridge. Was interesting seeing your video. What I did, and this could just be my personal placebo, was that I hit the power button on and off several times. That did make the game turn on.

Since this thread I've been remembering that retched game Bayou Billy and oh how I just wanted to pass it. I spent long hours playing that damn game. And of course there was no save. So if you failed you would have to start from the beginning all over again. Then sometimes the game messed up with artifacts and I was so desperate to pass the damn thing I tried playing the game anyway.

 

[Ichinisan]

For myself. Back in the day it was always hit and miss blowing into the cartridge. Was interesting seeing your video. What I did, and this could just be my personal placebo, was that I hit the power button on and off several times. That did make the game turn on.

Since this thread I've been remembering that retched game Bayou Billy and oh how I just wanted to pass it. I spent long hours playing that damn game. And of course there was no save. So if you failed you would have to start from the beginning all over again. Then sometimes the game messed up with artifacts and I was so desperate to pass the damn thing I tried playing the game anyway.

Many of us know that pain. The NES connector would eventually wear to the point that nothing worked. It was especially bad if you had ever used a Game Genie in the system, because that squashed the pins in the connector just a little bit and it became even more difficult to boot a game without the Game Genie.

When a connector gets to that point, I used to just replace it -- but the replacement parts available today all suck (except maybe the new "Blinking Light Win" product that has been back-ordered for months). Now, I just take the system apart and use a needle to carefully lift each pin in the connector just a little bit. After refurbishing the connector that way, games fit tighter and work good-as-new for a long time.

Then I take a swig of whiskey from my Zelda-cartridge flask and congratulate myself

 

[CZroe]

​

Do you have to blow in it?
Funny thing is, everyone did that and it had no effect. What the real problem was is the side loading. Nintendo latter made a top loader Nintendo and that solved the problem. Did you ever have this problem with Super? I think not.

Yeah I think it was the act of removing it and putting it back that made it work. The blowing in it was just an illusion that it made it work.

*sigh
No. Let's end that myth right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKE7dGTetDQ
...
Remove pass/pass and fail/fail results. An interesting trend appears:

GAME TITLE          STALE BLOWN
------------------- ----- -----
Castlevania               pass 
The Legend of Zelda       pass 
Kid Icarus                pass 
Little Nemo               pass 
Track & Field II          pass 
Top Gun                   pass 
Galaga                    pass 
Blades of Steel           pass 
Rygar                     pass 
WWF Wrestlemania    pass

Fascinating. :hmm:

Since when is that a myth. I always thought blowing in it did help as a kid, figured it was dust or something. But then later on it was determined it did not do anything, so now you're saying it actually DID help?

It was a myth when someone first incorrectly claimed that it did nothing and others, including yourself, started repeating it... as if the source's claim was more authoritative than the counter claim by people who would actually know and test. It's like Ichinisan was saying, who are you going to trust? People who demonstrably didn't even claim to have tested their claims, or people who have experimented/tested and demonstrated their counter-claims?

After your clock-boy thread where you trusted the electronics-illiterate media over electronics enthusiasts and even your own expert eyeballs telling you otherwise, I'd say that you demonstrably put WAY too much trust/weight into what you read and hear from particular so-called "professional" media sources. You didn't care what we said about the clearly-manufactured clock until some blog pointed out the same things in a seemingly more authoritative way... or was it the doctor's video on YouTube that the mainstream news media picked up instead? "Doctor" does not mean "electronics expert" any more than "professional news media" means "electronics experts." If this doctor noticed it, don't you think you should have too (especially before vehemently defending it against the ultimately-true allegations)? This NES blowing mentalfloss link that keeps getting shared presents itself as authoritative but if you actually read what is written you will see that it is a bunch of baseless made-up BS.

Well, Red, are we learning from our mistakes? I don't need a fancy YouTube channel or a blog to be right just like having a fancy YouTube page or an authoritative-sounding blog doesn't make these idiots right. More importantly, YOU don't need to base your opinions on what they say when you have enough experience and knowledge to form your own. Indeed, you are more familiar with component-level electronics than we or that doctor are. You also said you had your own experience with blowing NES game paks and once believed it worked. Clearly, you REVISED your own understanding to reflect what liars told you. I'm not stretching the definition of "liar" either: people too lazy to test their own incorrect hypothesis before authoritatively presenting it as confirmed fact while ignoring evidence and expert statements to the contrary are the worst kinds of liars.

I suspect that it is just a personality trait you need to be aware of so that you can compensate. You are probably one of those people who can be hypnotized really easily! Because you know how susceptible you are to the powers of suggestion, you should make a conscious effort to be more critical/skeptical. I'm sure there are many similar things that I have been duped by and I strive to find and correct them to improve my own understanding. You should too.