VGA rated NWC Gold cart on eBay

[stardust4ever]

Nothing better than exposing the EPROMS on a cart worth the price of a new car to naked sunlight. That'll work out great in the long run.

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?

According to the thread on NA, it won't affect the value. It's just something for display that won't ever be played anyway even if it wasn't sealed in a case.

I've mentioned in another thread on this that people into retro games pretty much collect for one of two reasons. Either for preservation or for display purposes. The NA guys mostly focus on display purposes, who has the nicest looking collection to show off to strangers or to stare at to stoke a personal ego at how great they are for being able to own something not everybody else does.

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.