Too bad I have a mortgage to pay for

[Nimtene]

I'd tend to agree. So 20,000 years from now,

if any of your carts give you the slightest bit

of trouble, I'll personally replace them all with

a working copy from my very own collection.

Guaranteed.

 

Small print: Offer not valid before year 20202.

[zraider]

NO SALE !! Didn't meet reserve ! Probably had it set at $1200 anyway. We'll see it at a later date, maybe marketed differently and with more great comments. Greedy, greedy !!

[Trey]

$700 bucks for a cart and it didn't sell?

 

I started collecting about 6 years ago because the games at the local flea market were a $1. Now I could buy all those carts that I couldn't afford as a 6th grader.

 

I guess its cool that my collection can put my kids through college but I traded my kids away for a chase the chuckwagon.

[mos6507]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pitfall Harry:

If properly cared for, there's no reason why relatively simplistic, 2600 game ROMs should fail any time soon. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if I can fire up all my Atari cartridge games and play them without a hitch 20,000 years from now.

---

 

Given that the Cuttle Cart design and the banking schemes for the 2600 are well documented, and given that the original Atari 2600 schematic exists, and given emulators and ROM images, it should always be possible to recreate the hardware down the road long after the originals are gone.

 

The only time this isn't the case is with prototype EPROMs that have not been dumped, or have been dumped but for which only exists one fragile backup (on floppy or something else that can easily go bad).

[El Destructo]

Please please PLEASE stop posting about Quadrun carts (incomplete at that) selling for a million bajillion dollars. My leg is sore from kicking myself.

[welshleo]

quote:

---

Originally posted by chrisr:

The problem with this line of thought, is that atari carts have a finite shelf life. No one can really say for sure, but 20-25 years is supposedly the life expectency for

the rom chips. Once the rom fails, the cart is worthless. Of course, all the original 78 releases should be failing now. Anyone notice any failures of the very old carts?

 

Chris

---

 

You'd be surprised just how sturdy 2600 ROMS are. About five years ago a collector friend needed to make some room and he dumped a pile of 2600 machines on me (mostly woodies) along with the carts and some other stuff for other systems. Since I didn't have much room in the house, I stuck them in an outhouse.

 

Disaster struck a year later when the back of the outhouse caved in, along with most of the roof! It was a few months later when I finally decided to see what could be salvaged (I was away from home at the time at University). The carts were obviously dirty, had worm and insect crap over them but were in reasonable cosmetic condition considering.

 

Anyway, tried them out and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them worked: despite having half a ton of rock dumped on them and being rained upon for months (Wales is not exactly a dry country)!

 

In fact, the only non-working ROM I have is the first game I bought in 1982 - a Berzerk cart. And that wasn't in amongst the ones crapped upon!