seems all switch carts are suseptable to bit rot in the future.

[OptOut | 8,881]

6 hours ago, The Strangest said:

Aren’t DS carts similar? Will be interesting to see how well/if they hold up between now and 2030-40.

Well, the ds came out in 2004, so for the launch titles we will be bumping up against the 20 year figure relatively soon. Personally, I am expecting these to last quite a bit longer than 20 years, it always seems to be the case that they err on the side of caution when making these estimates.

Anyway,I've got a Japanese copy of Super Mario 64 DS which I bought at launch, so I know it was manufactured in 2004, so let's see what happens to that in about 4 years from now! It'll be the canary down the mineshaft, so to speak, lol!

[Sumez | 2,933]

I'm not sure what the 20 year figure is based on. Almost every arcade board I own is well over 20 years old, and though a single EPROM will occasionally fail (and will happen for chips less than 20 years old, too), it's fairly rare. You don't just get failure across every chip out there.

That said, I understand that they aren't built to last forever. I don't ever play any games on emulation, but this is the primary reason I'm super thankful mame exists.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Sumez

[Estil | 1,261]

23 hours ago, Nes Freak said:

indeed it is.  they say 20 years  but ive seen eeproms eproms last 30 and 40 years (which is very similar to flash)  ive heard  different  between 25 to 50 years from other sources. so they could last 50 years but 20 years is just an estimate.

 

[T-Pac | 7,513]

On 3/24/2020 at 8:05 PM, OptOut said:

Everything in our collections is susceptible to bit rot, disc rot, leaking caps, corrosion, and the general wear and tear of time. It's all going to be gone someday, one way or another.

It's for each of us to decide how we feel about this, and the strategies we put in place to mediate and mitigate it. Certainly many of the things we own will outlast ourselves, many will not.

But, as the years roll by, solutions for keeping these games alive and the experiences they provide just keep getting better and better. From regular emulation, to FPGA systems, flash carts and remakes, good old fashioned modification and maintenance on original hardware, we now have more options than ever to enjoy our hobby indefinitely into the future.

We may not always be playing the same way, and we may lose some precious artifacts along the way, but we're never gonna stop gaming, never gonna stop feeling the way that made us get so crazy about these plastic squares in the first place! 

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 532]

I feel like this is a boogyman in the closet that are people are gonna get scared about for no reason. If I am not mistaken, this is simply data retention at the max specs, correct me if I am wrong. It was the same thing with EPROMs which were supposed to have a data retention of like 10 years, yet here we are with protos and arcade boards that used EPROMs still working just fine. I wouldn't worry about this, even if we do get to the point where it seriously matters, there will be a way to still play these games.

What I am saying is there is probably no reason to panic about this stuff...

[Makar | 1,946]

Didn't people think the same thing for NES games? And they still work 30+ years later.

[Tulpa | 3,488]

1 minute ago, Makar said:

Didn't people think the same thing for NES games? And they still work 30+ years later.

Different technology, though.

[phart010 | 1,705]

On 3/26/2020 at 5:22 AM, Sumez said:

I'm not sure what the 20 year figure is based on. Almost every arcade board I own is well over 20 years old, and though a single EPROM will occasionally fail (and will happen for chips less than 20 years old, too), it's fairly rare. You don't just get failure across every chip out there.

That said, I understand that they aren't built to last forever. I don't ever play any games on emulation, but this is the primary reason I'm super thankful mame exists.

Twenty years is just a convention that manufacturing companies have settled on over the years when they know the service life of a product will be a very long time but they have no way of knowing exactly how long. If they say 20 years, most likely it will be far more than 20 years, that’s just the safe number that they put out there.. Manufacturers generally never claim design life greater than 20 years.

With that said, I don’t think Nintendo made any claims as to how long the switch cartridges were designed to last. They do typically offer a warranty period, but warranty term and design life are two entirely different things.

[Sumez | 2,933]

That's pretty much the assumption I made, and why I think the whole  "20 years" thing should be taken with a massive grain of salt.