I remember way back when the Atari reigned supreme, people used to warn never to turn on a system without a cartridge in the slot. I think it may have even been warned in the instructions of my old Intellivision.

It used to be a common belief at least among my group of friends that if you left a system on without a cartridge in it, the console was certain to have something horrible happen to it. Looking back on this now, though, I can't recall anyone ever actually having a console break for a reason related to this.

I was working on my in-laws NES the other day, and was checking something and flipping it on and off without a cartridge in it, and it got me pondering this...

Anybody remember this/see a problem because of it?