How long really will these last??

[smf_4ever]

Question.. what is the expected live of a 2600 cart?? My lovely and always <cough*bullshit*cough>supportive wife asked me why I would be willing to spend the kind of money it takes (for lets say.. a quadrun) if they might go dead in the next few years and be worth what ET is (doorstop)?

 

If they are taken care of.. is there a estimated life span of these???

 

Just curious..

[Fretwobbler]

I wondered about this a while ago. Theres a rather amusing report of someone trying to damage / destroy one somewhere on the net and reading that, you dont need to worry too much.

 

My main concern regarding lastability is anything mechanical, i.e. disk drives and controllers, it will be original 2600 sticks and Dreamcasts you need to worry about in the future, not your 2600 carts.

 

Adam

[Chris++]

I've had some of my current carts since 1981, and they're still going strong. That's the only reference point I can offer from a personal perspective.

 

 

CF

[LinkoVitch]

I'd guess the main things to go on a 2600 system would be the controlers, cart port and switches. But as each are all pretty low tech by todays standards I'd guess that they would be easy to repair replace. I know the sticks are very easy to repair, been fixing them since I was 12 (far too many moons ago ) And you can always recoat word cart connectors. So I guess pretty much indefinately.

 

If the chip did die for some odd reason, you could always download the ROM off Atari Age, and burn it on an eprom and slap that in your cart, and your good as new again.

[Cassidy Nolen]

I believe as long as the raw parts are available, these things should last forever. There are so many carts, systems, parts, etc and so few interested in preservation (respective to the end numbers produced) there will always be a supply of extras. I can imagine that a system is most likely to die in the first year, and if it makes it past that, you should be ok. Other than the few small custom parts, most of these systems are pretty simple to repair/replace.

 

The ROM chips will last forever, whereas games like Gangster Alley (and many others) will need a "refresh" on the EPROMS every 25 or so years.

 

I am saving some sealed carts, because I would like to have an Atari at 50 party, where we document opening games and maybe a system for the first time in 50 years. Brand new, but old enough to retire. Heck, we are already half way there on some of them!

 

Cassidy

[llabnip]

Question.. what is the expected live of a 2600 cart?? My lovely and always supportive wife asked me why I would be willing to spend the kind of money it takes (for lets say.. a quadrun) if they might go dead in the next few years and be worth what ET is (doorstop)?

If they are taken care of.. is there a estimated life span of these???

Just curious..

 

The lifespan of a typical ROM cart with no other hardware taken into account is basically forever (well, not FOREVER! but long enough for you not to care). ROMs are a series of tiny fuses that are burnt to produce a pattern of 1's and 0's that cannot really be altered with time. It can, however, be damaged from a static discharge - walk across your carpet, pick up your cart and there is a teeny tiny chance you could discharge and damage the cart. But with reasonable care, this is not normally a problem. The contacts of the cart may also wear down - and some Activision carts are already doing this (I think they used thin PCBs to start with!). You can clean them if they get soiled or gummed up, but if they wear thin they won't make great contact. Still given proper care when inserting and removing from the console, this should not be much of a problem.

 

Now EPROM carts do have a theoretical lifespan as the electron charge configuration can shift over time due to entropy and cause bit pattern changes in the EPROM (UV light makes this happen very quickly which is what they use to erase EPROMS). But figure 20+ years in this case.

[smf_4ever]

Cool... Thanks all.. I just didn't know

[Xot]

The ROM chips will last forever, whereas games like Gangster Alley (and many others) will need a "refresh" on the EPROMS every 25 or so years.  

y

 

Does anyone have a comprehensive list of which carts were made with EPROMs as opposed to ROMs? As I stated in a previous thread I heard Time Pilot was also mass produced with EPROMs.

[AtariDude]

I took my Tardis and went into the future...4000 years into the future. They are still looking for the ET dump site and Atari cartridges still work

[CrazyImpmon]

While ROM maqy be virtually indestructable, there's one thing we're missing. Metal itself won't last forever. Typical copper usually corrode away and with the average thickness of the circuit traces, many carts would be good for around 40 years before the traces and contacts would have erroded through. Most carts do have plating on the connector to protect the copper but even they are not indestructable and will wear off from being plugged/unplugged.

[Stella'sGhost]

I think these carts will outlive us all....

[Osmeroid]

If you're really into the preservation thing, the metallic components can be 're-touched', using electroless metal plating. There are chemical kits on sale to the general public now for a couple hundered dollars, it sounds expensive but a single kit like this will be able to deposit good copper layers on thousands of carts. Most often I've seen nickel plating kits used by motorcycle enthusiasts but copper ones do exist too. I guess it would even be possible to protect them using silver/gold/platinum but that would be rather expensive, silver might not be too prohibitive in terms of cost and more robust to electrical damage than copper.