curl-6 said:
Can confirm, I own Atari 2600 carts from the 1970s that still function. Heck, as a kid I had a copy of Yoshi's Story on the N64 where the casing had been smashed in, but it still worked. Optical discs by contrast are easily scratched and most from that long ago don't work any more. |
Cartridges. Discs are great but are a bit of a pain to maintain. If you let the humidity in your house get over 80% your discs will be at serious risk of rotting over 30 years. But if you keep things at 50% humidity and 72 F then discs have been shown to last over 100 years. If you live in a humid climate get ready to run a dehumidifier every summer for decades.
I think a lot of discs have lasted just because most beloved game discs are only 30 years old or younger. But long term you need to be a climate control freak. 60 years of 80% humidity summers will rot your discs. And a decade of having no HVAC at all will almost certainly trash your discs. You can't go from 60 F to 90 F and equally wild humidity swings and not have disk rot. This is why so many UK Saturn collectors have found their collections decimated.
Thankfully the bulk of my disc collection comes from Arizona where it is bone dry almost year round so I have zero rot. I live in Iowa now but keep that dehumidifier running nonstop during summer.
