What if...

[Thunderbird]

IIRC, quite a while ago, I'm not even sure if it was back when I still hung out at JI2 or if it was here, but I asked some similiar questions about Jaguar cart eeproms and their life expectancy, and I believe it was T-bird that told me that there really isn't a "10 year lifespan" so to speak. It's not like the cart eeproms will just wear out or stop working once they are ten years old, that's just an extimated time that Atari put on the carts IF you use them regularly AND save over and over again. They are capable of more than 100,000 re-writes and will not fail until this limit is reached, 10 years is an estimate if you continually save games a lot from using the games regualarly (like as much as you did when you first got the game). I certainly am not constantly overwriting my previous saved games, and there are only about a dozen games that I do still play on a regualr basis, which is still a bit less than in '95, because I also own a lot of other consoles, both new and old now, so my playtime is spread out more over them all. The bottom line is that if you've only saved a game on a cart say, 200 times since you've owned it, then you probably still have about 90,800 saves to go before it wears out. IIRC. It's not like they run on a battery that will run out of power or anything...I doubt I've saved more than about 25 times at the most, even on the carts I've played a lot. So I figure that eeprom may last me the rest of my life, maybe longer...correct me if I wron T-bird, or am remembering what you told me wrong or something. Regardless, if I'm right or wrong, it doesn't mean the game won't still work, you just won't be able to save your progress anymore.

 

 

EEPROMS are guaranteed to hold their data for 10 years without being rewritten. If you don't ever power up the cart for 10 years and pull it out and expect to pick up your saved game from 10 years ago where you left off, then it may or may not be there... However, if you play the game one time every 9 years, and resave a new saved game, it will refresh the EEPROM and the 10 year clock will be reset.

 

The 100,000 write lifespan of the EEPROM is also a limitation. It means that you can only write to any location 100,000 times before it may fail. So, if you played your Jaguar 24 hours a day and saved your game once a minute, it would take 79 straight days of nonstop play before the EEPROM may fail.

 

Many EEPROMS made recently (BSG) have 1,000,000 write cycles for their lifespan, so you may wind up playing for 790 straight days to get a failure.

[LinkoVitch]

 

Try replacing the EEPROM without ripping the decal... good luck!!!!!

 

EASY! just use a hobby drill to cuttoff the back half of the shell (including cutting the screws in half. easy access.. just cellotape it back together again.. nobody with know the diff!!

 

Yeah I know this is a problem, but if all you want to do is be able to save you games then theres little else you can do bar buying a new copy.

[t.skid]

Well, it's nice if there's a way to resolve it