beautifulman2999

the above article was written by someone who had taken the game cartridge apart and then posted all those pics of the cartridge's internals on his website. according to him these switch game carts are possibly ROM or flash memory based, though he seemed unsure. in addition, i've also found this diagram which appears to have originated from Macronix's website quite some time ago. the diagram clearly shows that Macronix does not manufacture Mask-ROM chips higher than the capacity of 128mb. in other words, Nintendo Switch Game Cartridges are most likely not Mask-ROM based, as they are rated with a storage capacity of 32GB which would far exceed the 128mb limit of Macronix's own Mask-Rom chips. this means that all those Macronix chips that you see inside every switch game carts can't possibly be Mask-ROM based because Macronix does not produce Mask-ROM chips with that high of a storage capacity. currently the only product lineup from Macronix that DOES offer high capacity storage solutions would be their HybridFlash "XtraROM" chips which could store up to 8GB of data. however, Macronix also produced a custom variant of this chip called "Gaming Machine XtraROM" which has a maximum storage capacity of 32GB. in terms of both appearance and storage space, these custom "Gaming Machine XtraROM" chips seems to closely match the configurations of the Macronix chips that were commonly found inside most Nintendo Switch game cartridges. Regardless, as Macronix themselves had stated earlier, they are using their own propriety "XtraROM" technology as a storage solution for nintendo switch games. so at the very least, we know for a fact that nintendo switch game cartridges does indeed uses "XtraROM" chips to store its games, that much is certain. the bigger question is how long will this "XtraROM" chip be able to retain its data before data-rot sets in, seeing that it's not really maskrom technology. the article above seems to have technical inputs by Ralf Kilguss from Macronix, in which he clearly stated that the company's "XtraROM" HybridFlash technology will have a data retention time of around 20 years when stored at room temperature of 85 degrees centigrade. so there you have it; Switch Game Cartridges, which employs Macronix's "XtraROM" as its storage solution, will have a data retention span of at least 20 years according to the manufacturer Macronix. in the end, it seems that Macronix's "XtraROM" chips are not really Mask-ROM chips afterall, but merely a different kind of Flash Memory technology developed proprietorially at Macronix's R&D labs, and as such it would most likely be susceptible to Data-Rot as well, just like any other flash memory would to date. unfortunately this could mean that Nintendo Switch game cartridges might not be able to last forever like your old nintendo maskrom game carts from the 1990s would. as macronix had stated themselves, their "XtraROM" HybridFlash technology are guaranteed to hold data for at least 20 years, and that definitely doesn't sound like it's Maskrom to me. the fact that macronix had explicitly given us this estimate leads me to believe that they've already done all the relevant testing on these XtraROM chips beforehand which led to their 20 year estimation of data retention for this particular product. if i had to take a guess, i'd say that Macronix had probably done some kind of accelerated life testing on these XtraRom chips that eventually resulted to data decay as soon as they tried to go past the 20 year timespan in a simulated environment, hence the reason why macronix is telling us that these "XtraROM" chips will only retain data for 20 years because that's really what their lab results showed. though i for one am glad that they're atleast being honest about it. the thing with flash based technology they will eventually lose its charge and have all their 1s revert back to 0s, thus resulting in complete loss of data inside the game cartridge, aka Data-ROT. So while it might not happen today, it will surly happen someday. And in all honesty, that's just too much for me to bear. well that's pretty much all the information i could find regarding these switch game cartridges, if anyone has more to add in, please don't hesitate to let me know.

thanks for the informative replies! also just curious, do you think the game cartridge will still work if i desolder the capacitor for now?

so there are capacitors inside every single N64 game cart right? does that mean they will eventually leak and thus cause damage to the game cart? or are these not capacitors at all, and something else entirely? here's an example of capacitor leakage inside an NES game cart. thanks for letting me know!

does anyone know if Switch game cartridges are EPROM or MASKROM? the images above shows 2 types of configuration for these game carts; one that looks like a NAND chip and the other is a wafer sized flash memory chip that closely resembles to what's found inside a PS Vita cartridge. Thanks for taking your time in reading this and letting me know!

i remember seeing this jolly old thing back in 1998 at a PC-World Store. So many fond memories.

More info below. well i think that's all there is to know for EPROM, if anyone has more to add in, please don't hesitate to let me know.

*sigh* you're right, i guess nothing really last forever, somehow i keep forgetting that. With cartridges there's component rusting & bit-rot, then with discs there's disc-rot / CD-bronzing. Years ago i had to get rid of all my floppy games because most of good ones had become un-readable or corrupted (police quest/wing commander 2/doom). Even so, i still very much prefer physical releases than digital releases, even though it would be painful to see the game carts die off eventually. I'm a strange person really. I read that disc-rot is now a widespread issue for a lot of gamecube collectors, a number of the discs are quite literally falling apart from the inside. Very scary.

wow this is amazing! they really should have released this on retail.

Looks like some Vita Game Carts have already started to fail...well, that's kind of depressing actually. Also, would it be possible to move this thread to the Hardware section? Thanks for the help!

Thank you! i like your avatar too, it reminds me of Dune! If it turns out that playstation Vita game carts does indeed use flash memory as storage, then i supposed it would only be a matter of time before all the game data inside the cartridge begin to degrade and disappear entirely, effectively rendering the vita game cartridges unplayable. i think it's possible that 15-20 years from now, people are going to start complaining about their vita game carts suddenly not working or booting up at all. When that happens, then we'd know the Vita game cartridge does not store its game data permanently. For now it seems, we can only wait and see what will happen in the next decade or so, i guess only time will tell whether these Vita game carts are meant to last or not.

there's very little information on what type of memory chip is used on Vita game cartridges, though it would appear that it uses some kind of flash memory as its storage medium, but i could be wrong, can anyone here confirm this for me? Questions: - Do Vita game carts use EPROM or MASKROM? - If EPROM was used, does that mean the game data inside the cartridge is not permanent? Thanks for taking your time in reading this and letting me know!