Experience with cartridge archival? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

18 Oct 2006

Sorry, forgot something (see bottom of email)

 --- Bryan Pope <bpope at wordstock.com> wrote: 
...
  And thusly were the wise words spake by Jim Leonar
d
...
  > 
 > A mutual acquaintance of mine is trying to write  a
...
  thesis and needs a
  little help.  He writes:

 "The project that I am working on is for my  Masters in Library
  Information Science degree with a focus on 
Archiving. For my paper I
  have to write a 10 to 12 page paper on a subject
 that involves the
  preservation of something that has archival
 significance. So I decided
  to do it on video games and what steps are being
 taken to preserve them
 > on the media that they were originally written o n
...
  such as Atari and
  Nintendo cartridges some of which are degrading
 significantly and no
 > longer work on the game systems they were design ed
...
  for."

 If anyone has any help or leads for him, or any  experience archiving
 > ROMs/cartridges that may degrade over time and h ow
...
  to properly preserve
  them, please drop him a line at 
"andrew.pacilli at simmons.edu".  Your 
  input can shape an archivist's future :-)

 For Atari 2600, can you not just take a .bin
 downloaded from AtariAge 
 and burn it to a suitable EPROM that is then
 installed on a suitable 
 cartridge PCB?  AtariAge even sells everything you
 need to make your 
 own cartridges.  As for Nintendo, I believe they
 will be releasing 
 their back catalog for play on their new console,
 Wii.

 Cheers,

 Bryan

Thats not strictly true. Nintendo are releasing
*their* games for their old machines, such
as the SNES (aka Super Famicom in Japan), for
play on the Wii (pronounced "we" - it
apparently means "all" in Japanese)
However, there are about 2500 (perhaps more?)
SNES games of which only 100 or so are by
Nintendo.

Plus, what about the games by companies that
no longer exist, such as Psygnosis (bought by 
Sony around 1999), Bitmap Brothers (ok, still 
around but appear to be dead), Probe (dead), 
US Gold and their subsidiary Kixx (dead) and 
many others. 

*** forgotten bit follows ***

I have found that some of my SNES and
Megadrive games (on cartridges) sometimes
fail to run the first time after ages (eg. a
few years) of not being used.
With the exception of one or two, they have
all worked on the 2nd or 3rd attempts. I'm
not sure why that is, but aslong as they work :)

Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk