What does "Two Mega Cartridge" mean?

[BubbleBobble]

I just noticed that rather than simply being a Mega Cartridge, Shinobi on SMS is a Two-Mega Cartridge and its "Mega Type" is listed as Two-Mega. Since it is but a single cartridge with a single game upon it, I'm not sure what the two-mega is referring to. My guess is it's a measurement of the size of the game, but what is a "mega"? Definitely not a megabyte or megabit because those would be far too large. But, enough guessing, does anyone know what this is referring to?

[dendawg]

I just noticed that rather than simply being a Mega Cartridge, Shinobi on SMS is a Two-Mega Cartridge and its "Mega Type" is listed as Two-Mega. Since it is but a single cartridge with a single game upon it, I'm not sure what the two-mega is referring to. My guess is it's a measurement of the size of the game, but what is a "mega"? Definitely not a megabyte or megabit because those would be far too large. But, enough guessing, does anyone know what this is referring to?

 

A "Mega" is indeed a Megabit, or 128KB, Therefore two megas=256KB.

[Hitachi]

I noticed this about some of my games.

 

Monopoly : The mega plus cartridge

Hang on/Astro warrior : the combo cartridge

Space harrier : the two mega cartridge

Great golf : the mega cartridge

[Seob]

Just see the word Mega as a term to sell games better. Back in the 8 - 6 bit war the more bits and bytes you're game has the better the game was. At least that was what most people thought back then. Dendawg is right about the term.

A megabit is an SI-multiple (see prefix mega) of the unit of bit for digital information storage or transmission. The International Electrotechnical Commission's standard IEC 60027 specifies the symbol to be Mbit, but Mb is also in common use.

1 megabit = 10002 bits = 106 bits = 1000000bits.

Based on an eight-bit-sized byte this is equal to 125000bytes, 125 kilobytes (kB), or approximately 122 kibibytes (KiB).

The megabit is commonly used when referring to data transfer rates of computer networks or telecommunications systems, e.g., a 100 Mbit/s (megabit per second) Fast-Ethernet connection, or a 10 Mbit/s Internet access service.

The megabit should not be confused with the similarly named megabyte. One megabit = 0.125 megabytes. Network transfer rates and download speeds are often referred to in megabits, whereas the sizes of files transferred over these networks are often referred to in megabytes. To achieve a transfer rate of one megabyte (1024k) per second one would need a network connection with a transfer rate of eight megabits per second.

The binary-interpreted counterpart of the megabit, the mebibit (Mibit), refers to the quantity of 10242 bits = 1048576bits. From Wiki

Edited August 21, 2010 by Seob

[BubbleBobble]

Alright! Thanks. I guess I was confused about the size of a megabit. It all makes sense now!

[stalepie]

The confusion comes with the abbreviation "mb," which can refer to both megabit and megabyte, the latter of which is what was used to measure size in the 16-bit era.

[+5-11under]

Often Mb is Megabit, and MB is Megabyte. Not always, though.

[carmel_andrews]

Oops, perhaps i was wrong but i thought that MBit was the commonly accepted shortform for megabit

 

Additionally i notice that the internet service providers are trying the same missleading trick in their marketing and advertising for their internet services (when they describe the connection speed), i.e using MB instead of Mbit (as all internet and telcommunication data transfer speeds are measured in bits not bytes)

 

It's all a big con i tell yah, a big con

[+FujiSkunk]

I noticed this about some of my games.

 

Monopoly : The mega plus cartridge

Hang on/Astro warrior : the combo cartridge

Space harrier : the two mega cartridge

Great golf : the mega cartridge

 

"Mega" has been explained: each "mega" boasted by an SMS game is 128KB.

 

"Combo" is simply that: it's two games on a single (combined) cartridge.

 

Monopoly gets "Plus" because it also has battery back-up and support for up to 10 players.

 

Oops, perhaps i was wrong but i thought that MBit was the commonly accepted shortform for megabit

 

Additionally i notice that the internet service providers are trying the same missleading trick in their marketing and advertising for their internet services (when they describe the connection speed), i.e using MB instead of Mbit (as all internet and telcommunication data transfer speeds are measured in bits not bytes)

 

As Seob and others have demonstrated, there is a lot of confusion, some of it intentional, about how to properly use terms like "mega," "bit," and "byte."

 

The confusion comes from two main sources. One is the fact that a byte didn't always used to mean 8 bits. Officially, a byte was however many bits a given CPU was capable of digesting at one time. This could be 8 bits or 6 bits or 10 bits, or whatever. 8-bit CPUs became the most popular, of course, probably due to the number 8 being a clean power of 2 (2 x 2 x 2 = 8; computer geeks love powers of 2), and eventually a byte came to mean 8 bits. As 16bit, 32bit and bigger CPUs came out, we started using other words, like, umm, "word," to define 16bit and 32bit values.

 

The other source of confusion is the use of metric prefixes like "kilo" and "mega." Everyone knows the metric system is based on powers of 10, so that "kilo" means one thousand, "mega" means one million, and so on. But "kilo" in the computer industry is actually 1,024 (that's 2 to the power of 10; see a trend here?). With that start, "mega" becomes 1,024 x 1,024, "giga" becomes 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024, and so on up (tera, peta, yikes!).

 

But despite all that mess, by the mid 1980s we were all pretty comfortable with calling 8 bits a byte, and 1,024 bytes a kilobyte, and those more or less became industry standards... that is, until a bunch of different companies realized they could play with the numbers and the terms to make their products sound more impressive than they really are. Hence, "megabits" which are 1,024 x 1,024 bits (usually), or exactly 1/8th of a megabyte. Sega popularized the use of megabits for video games, but megabits are also the common way to express network and other data connection speeds (though "gigabit" is gradually taking over).

 

Worse is the hard drive industry, where "mega" and "giga" have been twisted back into their original metric definitions. Now we have megabytes defined as 1,000,000 bytes, and gigabytes defined as 1,000 megabytes. But hey, if you want to believe that 1-terabyte drive you just bought really does have 1,024 gigabytes or 1,024 x 1,024 megabytes, the hard drive manufacturers will happily let you dream, and not bother to correct you.

 

Some professional information technology groups have tried to compromise, letting the metric system (and the hard drive makers) have their prefixes back, while coming up with new prefixes like "kibi" and "mebi" to represent the 1,024-based numbers. Reaction has been mixed, with some scratching their heads in even further confusion (when they weren't snickering while trying to pronounce "gibibyte"), so you don't really hear these prefixes outside of the computer industry, and even there not very often.

 

 

 

Clear as mud, no?

Edited August 23, 2010 by FujiSkunk

[Video]

Actually, the reason your drive doesn't have all the memory it should have (usually about 10% down from it's supposed actual size) is because of the partitioning and the memory files. All that takes up space, so when you get a 300GB HDD, you only get about 270GB of it, right off the bat. And that's if it's a standalone drive, not the one with your OS on it, that's going to ax quiet a few more gigs right there. And any program you install, more gigs. Most every drive that I'm aware of, and every one I own when they say x GB, they mean GB (x1024) If you don't believe me, just check your drive in properties, and I bet it will be larger than the x GB (x1000) size it has listed. Though it will still have that "unknown" bit that is already used up for partitioning.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Video

[+FujiSkunk]

Most every drive that I'm aware of, and every one I own when they say x GB, they mean GB (x1024)

 

Ever look at the boxes the drives come in? You'll usually see in fine print somewhere how 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, or a similar message. More information here.

 

If you don't believe me, just check your drive in properties, and I bet it will be larger than the x GB (x1000) size it has listed. Though it will still have that "unknown" bit that is already used up for partitioning.

 

Your computer is going to report the drive space using "conventional" megabytes or gigabytes (or mebibytes or gibibytes to use the indisputable terms), regardless of how the drive was marketed. If that drive ends up being comparable in size to what was advertised, then great! But because of the difference between whether you define a gigabyte as a power of 10 or as a power of 2, the number your computer reports will usually be less than what's on the box, and that's even without taking partitioning and other overhead into account.

Edited August 23, 2010 by FujiSkunk

[Video]

Most every drive that I'm aware of, and every one I own when they say x GB, they mean GB (x1024)

 

Ever look at the boxes the drives come in? You'll usually see in fine print somewhere how 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, or a similar message. More information here.

 

 

Yep, I sure have. As I said, it's cause the partitioning and such will knock the size down. You can however get the computer to tell you EXACTLY how many TOTAL bytes the HDD is. My computer comes with a 4GB HDD, (yeah, I know, pathetic) and when you look at it in properties, it shows as 4096000000bytes. Remember to look at the TOTAL number, not the "Free space", (tells you how much is left) or the "Used space" (tells you how much your files are taking) or even the "capacity" (tells you the post partition size, which, as I said, will come about 10% short of total, or in my case, 3.76GB)

 

But hell, believe what you want to, no skin off my ass one way or another. I even went and checked some of the other drives, though I have no boxes, I seem to remember the size being listed on at least one as X=1 billion bites or some such, but again, it's not going to match perfectly no matter what, unless you can get a file on there that doesn't use partitions. It's just laziness on the part of the printer, and nobody gives a shit about the extra 24 bytes anyways, when you automatically loose over 100 anyways.

[Seob]

Most every drive that I'm aware of, and every one I own when they say x GB, they mean GB (x1024)

 

Ever look at the boxes the drives come in? You'll usually see in fine print somewhere how 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, or a similar message. More information here.

 

 

Yep, I sure have. As I said, it's cause the partitioning and such will knock the size down. You can however get the computer to tell you EXACTLY how many TOTAL bytes the HDD is. My computer comes with a 4GB HDD, (yeah, I know, pathetic) and when you look at it in properties, it shows as 4096000000bytes. Remember to look at the TOTAL number, not the "Free space", (tells you how much is left) or the "Used space" (tells you how much your files are taking) or even the "capacity" (tells you the post partition size, which, as I said, will come about 10% short of total, or in my case, 3.76GB)

 

But hell, believe what you want to, no skin off my ass one way or another. I even went and checked some of the other drives, though I have no boxes, I seem to remember the size being listed on at least one as X=1 billion bites or some such, but again, it's not going to match perfectly no matter what, unless you can get a file on there that doesn't use partitions. It's just laziness on the part of the printer, and nobody gives a shit about the extra 24 bytes anyways, when you automatically loose over 100 anyways.

Don't forget slack. That can consume up to 40% on a fat hdd.

slack

ntfs

[+FujiSkunk]

But hell, believe what you want to, no skin off my ass one way or another.

 

Seriously, I am not making this stuff up. There have been lawsuits over what makes a megabyte a megabyte.

[+FujiSkunk]

Here is the fine print on a 1.5TB drive I bought not too long ago. Note how they cover themselves by addressing both the differences in word definitions and the reduced capacity due to overhead.

 

Edited August 25, 2010 by FujiSkunk

[carmel_andrews]

The upshot of the whole HD issue is.....Just because it says 1tb (or whatever) on the tin...don't ever assume or otherwise that you're going to get 1tb out of the thing

 

To me, it's a bit like saying, there's a pound coin, but it's only worth 90 odd pence to you

Edited August 25, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[Reaperman]

I miss the days when bigger games printed their size on the label. A 600 megabit neo geo game tends to be better than a 300 megabit one, and if a PS3 game came out and said it filled the bluray disc, I think that it's sales would compare favorably to the rest of the games which generally fit fine onto dvd's.