NES/SNES Cart Lifespan

[BacteriaInfection]

Curious, what is the estimated time for the maximum lifespan of NES and SNES carts?

I mean, for someone who takes absolutely care of them, keeps them immaculate, out of sunlight with protective covers and treats them with the utmost care, how many years can they be expected to function before the pcb/transistors/capacitors etc malfunction naturally and the carts cease to work?

SNES carts are already 20+ years old, and NES even older than that. How much longer can these guys live?

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

Probably the only thing you would need to worry about causing a issue is the capacitor on the carts pcb drying up, if it has one. If so it can be changed out easy enough. I expect otherwise most of these carts will outlive me. Then again though, I used to be a heavy chain smoker so I probably wont live past 60.

[Ro-J]

2600 carts are still going strong. I suspect these old carts will be around for a very long time.....longer than early CD based games at least. 'Disc Rot' is apparently becoming a problem.

[BetaWolf47]

There will probably be a time when all of the carts and their labels decay, and we're just inserting loose PCB's into caseless consoles... and using reproduction controller shells with real internals.

[jb143]

Plastics aren't as un-biodegradable as people think. Museums have been having trouble keeping early plastic from degrading....even NASA stuff from what I remember.

[Sonicwolf]

I think its more likely that the consoles we play these games on will die before the cartridges.

[BacteriaInfection]

So, let's say 80 more years as a maximum limit? Basically, sometime before the year 2100 the last few carts will be operable?

[Sonicwolf]

So, let's say 80 more years as a maximum limit? Basically, sometime before the year 2100 the last few carts will be operable?

It all depends on the quality of the cartridge components. Some computers from the 1980's are already having operating troubles due to bad capacitors and such.

It's just like with CD's and LaserDiscs. Some manufacturers made perfect CD's and LaserDiscs that will probably last until the end of time while other companies make disc's that barely last 20 years due to imperfections and bad materials.

[alec006]

Well my Super Pong still works as if it were new,and its 34 years old. It has many components in it that could go at any moment,mostly analog but theres still an early computer chip that holds the Pong program in there. All my carts still work like new as well,from Atari to N64 most of them being used. Granted sometimes a few like to be stubborn and require the old q-tip and rubbing alchoal treatment but its common for them to do that and they don't do it very often at all as long as they are cared for. I say they will last my lifetime and ill be able to show my grandchildren what I was playing when I was a kid and hear them laugh at unrealistic polygons moving across the screen.

[Red Baron]

I'll be very curious as to how carts age.. Since I plan to learn more about electronics, it might be interesting if someday there may be a chance to preform life-restoring surgeries on my own collection.

Of course, if my disc-based games end up turning into dust, there wouldn't be a thing I could do.

In any case, I'm one of the odd people who would want to keep my collection even if they stopped working entirely. It'd be too much to toss away years of collecting just because they're dead and impossible to replace, and it's not like I really have a huge enough collection to have genuine storage issues.

[BetaWolf47]

Whether a game lasts your whole lifetime will depend greatly on how long you plan on living. Reality check: lots of people here are couch potato gamers who probably won't make it to 50.

[lkermel]

Yeah, I also think these carts will outlive us.
I'm more concerned about Disks - some of my Atari ST and Famicom Disks have died... and even rewriting them didn't make any difference, the magnetic films gave up and there's nothing I could do about it.
I'm also concerned about the hardware, I hear more about consoles frying than cartridges - when I look back, so far, I've personally *killed* three consoles by accident (RIP) and never a single cart...

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

longer than early CD based games at least. 'Disc Rot' is apparently becoming a problem.


It's just like with CD's and LaserDiscs. Some manufacturers made perfect CD's and LaserDiscs that will probably last until the end of time while other companies make disc's that barely last 20 years due to imperfections and bad materials.


I figured this would come up eventually in this discussion, just not this soon. Im going to state right now, because I have been seeing this claim of peoples game disc rotting happen off and on on gaming forums as of late, that pinholes on disc are not related to bit rot. They tend to not cause issues with a disc being read at all unless they are just really big in size (which tends to only happen if caused by the owner). It seems that some people have confused pinholes with disc rot and have freaked out when going back and seeing their older pressed disc having them where there is no painted layer on the disc.

Pinholes are typically caused when the disc is pressed, or afterwords during processing and packaging, and do not get wider, or worse over time, unless some moron starts rubbing at them hard with his fingernail or something out of paranoia. Sometimes they can happen due to customer handling too, if there was a tad bit of excess on the top layer in a tiny spot and it got rubbed off, or the disc got dinged somehow on the unprotected layer.

Pinholes have been a common manufacturing problem with cds right from the get go when compact disc was released to the consumer in the early 80's, and do not cause rot, and are not typically or commonly caused by disc rot, period. Pinholes can be present on the disc when it was bought new, regardless of what year it was manufactured. People tend to not realize how much handling a disc goes though via machines and people during the manufacture and package process.

Actual cd disc rot in relation to a cd will have bronzing/discoloration issues usually that get worse over time. I have never in my life owned a cd based game with that kind of issue. I have owned music cds manufactured in the 80's that did. UK PDO was one of the major culprits in regards to that.

There are other things that can effect compact disc too, like being stored in poor temp controlled areas, which will cause the layers to change color (typically white) and/or flake off in spots. Tiny spec flake offs due to that may initially look like pinholes, but they are not caused by the same thing and are random in size and can get worse by touch.

Thats not really normal cd rot related though, as it wouldn't have happened if the owner had stored the media properly over the years. The company Prodisc likes to try to spin that as rot related in their sales pitch PDF, along with pinholes, so they can sell more cd-r media. Some guy from RFgeneration linked to that when he shouldn't have in one of his panic blogs where he confused pinholes with disc rot a month ago. Also in regards to the pinhole is rot related belief, it doesn't help either that some moron edited into Wikipedia that pinholes are rot related on the disc rot entry. Another supposed expert passing off his fear spin as fact.

The fact is the pinhole thing has been a common issue with compact disc media since its been on the market. Its nothing new, it didn't just suddenly start to happen, and those pinholes didn't just happen magically over time during storage. Music collectors having been dealing with it since day 1. Its a common issue, and nothing to lose sleep over.

Laserdisc rot issues tended to be similar to cd rot initially with the early laserdisc and Discovision stuff, with the reflective layer becoming visibly damaged over time due to rot. Later manufactured disc with rot issues though still tend to look fine to the naked eye. Pinhole issues with laserdisc were minimal after the Discovision period due to better manufacturing, and the fact the internal layers are not exposed to everyday use/dings and scuffs. I only have one LD disc with any kind of pinhole problem. Its my copy of The Howling.

Supposedly some Dreamcast game disc are starting to rot, so I have read anyway. I have never seen one personally that has rotted, though I have seen new games not boot right off the bat due to invisible manufacturing flaws. I do imagine Bluray users will see rot issues over time, as Sony has already managed to make some disc that have rotted. Sony was horrible at making Laserdisc, so that doesn't surprise me one bit.

[retroman]

Forever....my old atari carts work great

[Leo_A]

Curious, what is the estimated time for the maximum lifespan of NES and SNES carts?


Longer then you so don't worry about it.


I figured this would come up eventually in this discussion, just not this soon. Im going to state right now, because I have been seeing this claim of peoples game disc rotting happen off and on on gaming forums as of late, that pinholes on disc are not related to bit rot.

Have a source? That directly contradicts everything I've seen in the press on the subject.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

Have a source? That directly contradicts everything I've seen in the press on the subject.

Join some heavy music or movie collector forums that have been around longer then 4 years and do some archived thread searches, get in touch with some cd collectors who have been collecting since the beginning,ect.

Heres a link on bronzing, its detailed enough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_bronzing

Some thread links discussing disc rot and pinholes to get you started:
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1396990&postcount=45 (you can read the entire thread, but that post gets to the grit of it)
http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=152945
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=165655
http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=178980
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=128449

When I first started buying music cds (1991), and Turbo Cd disc (1994), I noticed the pinhole problem right away. At that time my brother in law was a heavy music collector, and most everything he owned had them too. When I moved onto 3DO and Sega Saturn,same issue, some disc just had them right at release, new. Its a common problem thats always been. Just get over it. Unless your prone to rubbing the affected areas alot out of stupidity, or using cleaners like Windex (ammonia=bad) that are volatile to your disc, you have nothing to fear about them.

[Ro-J]

I don't think I'm going to try to claim to know as much on the subject as PC-ENGINE, I'm sure he's put a lot more time into researching the subject than me, but Disc Rot does have me concerned. Interestingly, the RF Generation article he referenced was one of the posts I've read and perhaps need to re-read with more objective eyes. The article is here (http://www.rfgeneration.com/news/disc-rot/An-important-note-to-Video-Game-Sellers-and-Buyers-1337.php) if anyone is interested.

[Compute]

When I picked up my C64 stuff (Thanks again, YoshiM), most of the disks I have found are unreadable or incomplete. It really sucks because the person who wrote these 200+ disks did a LOT of bbs piracy, so nearly every game has a 'cracked by' demo screen. Also tons of gfx and sound demos, most of which are lost to time. I only hope that they may read better in a drive with track 0 detection. Back up your floppies, guys!

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

The article is here (http://www.rfgeneration.com/news/disc-rot/An-important-note-to-Video-Game-Sellers-and-Buyers-1337.php) if anyone is interested.

Yep, that one. Dont think Ive read anything as funny as that in awhile on the net. I was like "where has this guy been the past 20+ years and how could he just now be spotting this shit considering its been going on forever on compact disc based media??". Worst yet was he didn't have half a idea what he was talking about, and I can only imagine he was all in tears as he went though his collection spotting pinholes here and there on disc, getting himself all angry and worked up creating worst case scenarios in his head about his suddenly ruined collection (all in his mind).

While I have no doubt he may have come across a few genuinely defective disc in his massive collection, considering he has no idea wtf hes talking about on that blog in regards to rot and pinholes, I don't think he really has a clue as to the real cause of those said disc being defective, and I wont even begin to rule out system failure, or user failure for that matter. I have never in all my life ran into a disc that had a play or read issue due to a normal common sized pinhole (very tiny). Anything larger then the common sized ones tend to be user made, and yea, those can cause read issues. But again, those are not disc rot related, just dumb ass related.

Also, you can have a compact disc that has play back issues and looks perfectly fine. Its rare, but can happen when a plant over uses a stamper to press the disc. When the stamper starts to wear down it doesn't do so hot a job, and while you may not be able to see the end result with your eyes, it is there and will cause horrible playback issues because a weak laser cant read the data that well (Double Dragon NeoGeo Cd and Kittie: Spit music cd come to mind).

Lasers with moderate to heavy use tend to have the most problems with that type of disc. This was a problem that even affected Laserdisc, which would cause problems similar to laser rot related problems, but usually not anywhere near as bad. Just minor overall, and a really good player wont have as much a problem with a disc like that, if any problem what so ever.

[arcadecup]

I think the #1 enemy to carts will be corrosion to the PCB board solder joint areas & chip leads.
This is a common problem with older arcade PCB’s that are stored in garages or damp warehouses as they rot away in the cabinet. Game carts though, I suppose only the ones in humid areas or locked away in a basement or if they caught flood damage.