VGA rated NWC Gold cart on eBay

[G-Boobie]

No bidders yet. Not surprising with a starting bid of 17 grand. That cart is worthless if the ROMs don't work. I'm happy enough just owning the Retrozone reproduction. Just curious, how many minutes of direct sunlight exposure does it take to erase an EPROM? I was under the assumption that a complete erasure required a 15-minute exposure underneath a germicidal UV-C lamp. UV-C is entirely blocked out by the Ozone layer, but small amounts of UV-B can penetrate it. I sincerely hope those display cases have UV protection, not only for the EPROMS but also for archiving box/label art. One could find out real quick by shining a black light through one and placing fluorescent material behind it.

In terms of ionization energy, not actual intensity...

heat > IR remote > candle < incandescent light bulb (visible) < fluorescent lighting (visible) < black light (harmless UV, but can fade some inks) < tanning lamp (suntan) < direct sunlight (sunburn) < germicidal UV lamp (kills stuff) < x-rays < gamma rays

I'm assuming that lesser energy radiation would need higher doses than higher-energy radiation to do equivalent damage. So could airport X-rays also damage EPROMs?

Don't judge all NA'ers. I've got tons more posts on NA than I do here, but I don't hoard games that I don't intend on playing. The practice of paying ridiculous quantities of money for factory sealed games that will never be opened particularly baffles me to no end. Same with insisting on having a complete set. Heck, I'll usually sell a game back to the store if I don't enjoy playing it; whether it's rare or not, it gives someone else a chance to enjoy it more than I do. Megaman series comes to mind as great games that for me have zero replay value. I had Megaman 1, 2, & 3 at one point, but I sold all three of them because they were all impossibly hard to play, even with a Game Genie.

You don't need to entirely erase the EPROMS. Just enough to render the data unreadable. I'm sure that the slab itself blocks most UV light, but if the right bit reads one, not zero, because its been hanging out on a wall across from a east facing window for a year, your super rare cart no longer functions. And that's incredibly stupid.

This is very much like someone pulling the staples out of Action Comics #1 and framing each individual page. If you're not entirely into comics, its a cool novelty. If, on the other hand, you're into comics history, its a fucking crime.

I can even see slabbing a whole, un-disassembled NWC cart: its kind of preservation. What this asshole did isn't preservation. It's carefully shellacking a corpse, and proudly hanging it in your den. "Hey guys, check it out! I ruined a piece of gaming history so I could sell it for a little more money!"