No one ever talks about this, but the Atari 2600 cartridges (most of them) had a very unique design. The bottom of the cart had a dust cover that protected the bottom of the PCB. Whenever the cartridge was inserted into the 2600, two tabs on the console would push into the two small slits in the bottom of the cart which would cause the dust cover to fold back and allow the game to insert into the console. When the cart was removed, a spring would pop the dust cover back down. Not all 2600 games used this design, but most of the "standard" carts did.
The only reason I bring this up is because I bought a large lot of 2600 games at Goodwill last week. Now this was not my first rodeo with Atari games. However, as I was testing them I was amazed by the fact that EVERY SINGLE game with the dust cover worked on the first try and EVERY SINGLE game that didn't have the dust cover required cleaning of the contacts. It is an extremely well thought out design that still works today by protecting the games. And the best part was that you can't lose the dust cover like many people did with the NES and SNES dust covers back in the day.
I know that the Atari 5200 used the same design with their carts. I don't know about the 7800 because I don't own any, but I'm guessing that it still used the same design since 2600 carts could be inserted into the console. It’s unfortunate that the Jaguar didn’t have it, but it’s obvious by the design of the Jaguar that there were a lot of cost cutting ideas put into place when it was built.
Anyway, I just thought I would ramble on about that because it's such a cool design and feature, yet I never hear anyone ever talk about.
