Flash Memory and collecting for Vita/3DS/Switch

[Shelcoof]

Hey shmupers/gamers/collectors/trolls

I don't know about you guys but I love my physical games.

I have a huge library of games ranging from my beloved Sega Master System to my Playstation 4. Most of my library consist of discs and game cards.

Recently I've been reading up on disc rot and bit rot ever since I had a scare when I decided to boot up one of my old Dreamcast games and it didn't boot. To my inspection there was a clear pin hole on the GDRom which I thought caused the failed boot up. Luckily the surface was just dirty and once cleaned worked like a charm.

This experience lead me to read up more on the issues.

I soon learned a bit more about Flash memory that is used on current Vita, 3DS and Switch carts. Apparently the memory used will eventually fail. Life expectancy is about 10 to 15 years?

I mean if this is true then what's the point of going physical when the whole point of buying physical for me is that I can play it years down the road.

10-15 years isn't long at all. I still boot up my original Saturn and Playstation often. The other day I decided to play some Star Fox 64 on my N64.

I know there are flash carts and back up devices out there but it isn't the same experience. I love it when I boot up my Dreamcast and I hear the laser going crazy reading the GDRom Disc and the loud noise the fan makes.

The experience of opening up that DVD case to see the manual and pop out the DVD and then insert it into your console.

I absolutely love it but what's the point of having a physical game if its going to fail years down the road.

Unlike other collectors out there I play my library of games when I get the chance.

Since reading up on this stuff I actually halted purchasing games. Especially Card Based games for Vita, Switch and 3DS.

I'm really bummed out here. Whats a gamer to do

[drauch]

I mean, you've REALLY gotta take this stuff with a grain of salt. There's a ton of fear-mongering amidst retro collectors for this sort of thing and I don't really believe it's anything to get majorly spooked about. Just take care of your stuff; a lot of this has to do with how things are stored (like getting super hot/humid). I think it's pretty difficult to say X item will only last Y years, especially when a lot of these items are more than outliving their expectancy.

[Shelcoof]

Apparently the life expectancy for these game cards are roughly 10 to 15 years. That's pretty short in my books.

When you read up on how the technology works you sort of get spooked thinking hey at around that time when you want to pop in your game card it might not work.

Nature of flash memory is that they will eventually lose their data. There really isn't anything changing that.

I don't think heat or humidity is a factor regarding flash memory. I could be wrong though.

We've all heard of the capacitor epidemic that plagued a lot of retro consoles... or at least the PC Engine right. Bad caps used leaked and so failure rate of our beloved game consoles didn't last.

Also heard about the bad caps used on CRTs back in the days as well. Which lead to failures in CRT Monitors.

Also look at one of the worst epidemic that plagued gamers. The Red Ring of Death was huge. Almost everyone I knew had their Xbox 360 fail on them at least twice. One person five times and myself once and I only played my Xbox 360 for less than 48 hours.

This was due to the Xbox 360's design. The life expectancy of an Xbox 360 is really short and there are a lot of facts to back that up.

With that said I am still uneasy about Flash memory used in our game cards. Unless someone else who knows more about this than I do chimes in and corrects me.

[ZellSF]

With that said I am still uneasy about Flash memory used in our game cards. Unless someone else who knows more about this than I do chimes in and corrects me.

Isn't that hard to do, without knowing what you know about it? You just mentioned a random number with no reference to where you got it from.

I mean, if you're just guessing randomly, I do know more about this than you.

[Shelcoof]

lol I'm no expert. I'm meant to say hopefully someone who is an actual expert can chime in. I did have a friend who has a PHD in science who talked to me about this stuff years ago.

[drauch]

I mean, man, that's completely different. You can replace all of that stuff. You can fix bad caps and all that. Same with red ring. And that was poor manufacturing to begin with on early models, not just something that inevitably died because of its age. It'd be different if all this stuff was just completely fubar, but that's not the case, and it can usually be fixed.

And yeah, "apparently." This the fear-mongering I mean. Average CD-R life is "apparently" 10 years. I think I've had one develop rot because it was sitting in a hot car for countless years with plastic melting over it, but I've got others getting close to the 20 year mark and they're doing just fine. I'm sure many more could attest to this.

In short, if you're talking about just actual media being screwed over time, that's realllly hard to gauge and these tests just give a general idea. It's impossible to know the future for something like this. And from my basic knowledge, flash memory slowly degrades with rewrites. And when you think of how little rewriting you're actually doing on something like a DS or Vita game I can't imagine it's much with how small save files are.

[Shelcoof]

Yhaa I'm talking about the actual media being screwed over time.

Taking the nature of the technology into consideration and your left with questions.

I only reference the issues about the caps and the Red Ring of Death as examples. Caps go bad your lead to failure. Flash memory goes bad your lead to failure. I mean if your game card fails... there really isn't much you can do about it really. The thing is going to be a very light paper weight.

With Disc based media is a bit different. I think if you take care of them you should be fine for the most part.

As for the Xbox 360 I'm sure the Red Ring of Death was due to poor design on MS's part and not manufacturing. Even with revisions and the newest models they end up biting the dust as well. As for a Fix for it I'd love to hear it because I have a few Xbox 360s here with tons of Xbox Live games that I'd love to play years down the road

But from my understanding it can't be fix.... I could be wrong though... I'm hoping I am.

I remember years ago when I had bought myself a very compact gaming Laptop from LG. It had an NVIDIA 8600GS mobile graphics card (Name was something like that). I spent like almost 2k on the thing sheesh. When gaming the thing got so freaking hot it was crazy. So I googled to see if that was normal.

To my surprise I ended up finding an article about defective NVIDIA's GPU's dying due to poor design and added with the heat problem it was prone to failing. It was inevitable apparently.

So I took precautions to avoid over heating the GPU by not stressing it playing games. Took very good care of my Laptop only to have the GPU fail on me eventually.

[TransatlanticFoe]

This 10-15 year thing, I've not seen a credible source for this and so neither the maths/evidence to back it up.

It seems it works similar to EPROM - given there are retail Atari 2600 carts that use EPROMs and not mask ROMs that, presumably, are still working. Sure it's not as robust as a not-abused NES/SMS/MD/SNES cart or modern disc games, but it's probably going to last.

Yes, the charge that's used to program the memory will go eventually. But nothing lasts forever anyway.

[Zen]

Hardware-wise; If my Saturn or PS1 boots up, I grateful. I don't expect or depend upon it.
Learning about your Hardware and how to maintain it, is a good idea.

Software; Back-up, Back-up, Back-up . . . and then, keep a Back-up of that!
I sympathise with your love of the physical article and indeed with your despair over the finite lifespan of same.
For what its worth, my own outlook on older physical gaming media; be happy, forget about "later" and enjoy the hell out of them now.

Re. the xbox 360.
It was the lead-free solder used, combined with the heat, that was the problem I believe?
If that's the case, they are all fucked. I went through 4 (including a "slim") and have not bought any console that came after. Consoles, after the Sixth generation, lost my interest anyway.

[drauch]

Yeah, I get the anxiety for failing media. When I first read about this stuff I was freaked, too, so don't let it get ya down. The way I've always looked at it is, if it starts failing when my body starts failing, then so be it; we lived a good life.

[BIL]

If a medium really is destined to shit the bed after such a short lifespan, I'd have no regrets just going with outside solutions when the time comes. To say nothing of download-only stuff that's fated to vanish into the ether without unofficial support. I've a small mountain of Famicom carts pushing thirty-five years old, and PCE/Mega CDs hitting a quarter-century, all of which stilll boot flawlessly and run for hours at a time without complaint. Even there, I'm interested in stuff like solid state optical drive replacements...

Anyway, take heart! None of this is forever.

Spoiler

All creature will die and all the things will be broken.

That's the law of samurai.

[Shelcoof]

At least with original Playstation games you can play them on the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3. As for the Saturn unfortunately nothing else unless we look at emulation.

I'm totally fine playing back ups.... However i just want to be able to play my originals too. Maybe I see video games as artwork and owning a working original is what makes me happy. Of course I'm talking about games I enjoy and not some hoarder who collects because it is "rare".

Regarding the Xbox 360 I read about the solder issue too. But I think the main culprit was the actual design which pretty much packed everything so tightly together that heat the units would over-heat. With new revisions to add a huge fan on top to help reduce heat they would still fail.

I'd love to play games all day long but now is not the time for that unfortunately. Life is busy and I'd be lucky if I get 3 hours a week of games? Maybe less.....

[BIL]

I'm totally fine playing back ups.... However i just want to be able to play my originals too. Maybe I see video games as artwork and owning a working original is what makes me happy.

Same same. But I've occasionally thought, what if Eliminate Down or Recca or Battle Formula randomly, I dunno, crack a solder trace or something? Whatever causes these things to just die (I've never had a cart just die on me... I was a bit scared buying up those shaweet NTSCJ Tengen MD releases, with the talk of US Grind Stormers shitting the bed, but after five years' hard slapping and god knows how many before I received 'em, Slap Fight MD & co are still slapping strong).

Assuming repair was impossible, I'd honestly just get a flashcart, gut my originals and wham in the flash. And wham in a new one if that died, ad infinitum. At some point you've gotta accept this stuff.

Or fork out hundreds of smackeroos replacing them, while hoping you're not buying a boot, but fuuuck that.

[Shelcoof]

That raises a few good points. I would actually consider some sort of reproduction if my originals failed. If it looks and sounds like a duck it must be a duck right.

It's funny you mention it because these days they are releasing alternatives to play your original games on like the Analog NT and the what was the other one Super Analog NT?

People are even buying reproduction carts to add into their collection. I know these aren't originals but collectors are going that route to just own a physical copy of a game.

Hell even I own a reproduction of an English Translated Mother 3 to play on my GBA.

Whats with us wanting to own some sort of physical media?

[Zen]

Whats with us wanting to own some sort of physical media?

Fear of death.

[BIL]

Pure vice. (pretty harmless as vices go... just don't chase the dragon too hard, or you too may end up selling your butt for Ducktales in RGB! )

[TransatlanticFoe]

A reproduction uses programmable ROM that stores data in broadly the same way as 3DS/Switch carts. So if you're worried about those, them repro carts should absolutely give you the same concern (unless you invest in your own gear so you can reprogram the ROM every so often). But again, no evidence to support the short lifespan so often quoted.

[Immryr]

yeah i don't see the point in repros, just get a flash cart.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Well, in case you wanna get on a first-gen aeroplane flight, you won't find aircraft that old still operational. Time destroys everything & everybody.

[Shelcoof]

yeah i don't see the point in repros, just get a flash cart.

It's strange there is an illusion of authenticity with repros. Even though we know they are not genuine, people seem to settle with them.

Especially games for example that have never had a western release.

[bigbadboaz]

Honestly, just do your best not to stress the expected lifetimes of these things. Yes, we buy physical to have it "forever" - but nothing is forever in this life, whether from theft, loss, disaster, or what have you.

Even if these "10-15 year" pieces of media far surpass expectations and go 35 or 40.. that's still probably within your lifetime and unless your interests totally change, something you will still have to deal with even after a very long time. It's like everything else: sad things will happen. You will also find a way to deal and move forward.

To me, the most encouraging thing is the old 8- and 16-bit RPGs whose internal batteries were only supposed to work for 5 years. It's like 30 years later, those carts are still being sold, swapped around and played, but you don't hear an awful lot about carts that won't hold a save. If that's anything to go by, you've got nothing to worry about with these "10-15 year" media.

Enjoy your collection!

[null1024]

So, I'm really curious. What's the deal with flash ROMs that would make 'em last only 10-15 years?
Especially if they weren't being written to?
The only thing I can think of are literal cosmic rays flipping the bits, since the memory cells would still be physically writable, even if the lines to do so normally weren't hooked up.

...so, invest in a good lead box?

[Shelcoof]

With those carts that needed a battery all it took was a simple battery replacement and your good to go.

Yes nothing lasts forever but the fact that these things are pretty much like a ticking time bomb makes it uneasy to collect for. Am I blowing things out of proportion.... of course!! Maybe? lol But we all want to preserve our toys for as long as we can and when there really isn't anything we can do about it... well it sort of a huge bummer.

It's weird ever since I started getting paranoid about this whole I actually started spending more time playing games. It's great that I'm enjoying more of my games now... it's not so great that I know I won't have them FOREVER!!!

[Shelcoof]

So, I'm really curious. What's the deal with flash ROMs that would make 'em last only 10-15 years?
Especially if they weren't being written to?
The only thing I can think of are literal cosmic rays flipping the bits, since the memory cells would still be physically writable, even if the lines to do so normally weren't hooked up.

...so, invest in a good lead box?

From my limited understanding..... there will always be electrical leakage. I guess if it gets severe enough the data will revert back to 0.

I think the only way to fix this would be to reflash them but obviously none of us are able to reflash these cards. I've also read that making sure they get turned on once in a few years helps prolong the life of the data.