You guys realize that the ROM chips used in NES cartridges only

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NOT ON MY WATCH!

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>>3658787
>he plans to live past 40

Why live?

>>3658787
My hardware will outlive my software. Good thing China will still be producing Famicom bootlegs and everdrives for well beyond my lifetime.

>>3658787

No one knows what the lifespan is of mask roms when used infrequently.

Heat and constant use may shorten their lifespan a bit but 80 years is a pretty conservative estimate.

Consoles will die long before the carts do. Capacitors will give out long before the ICs.

>>3658787
Do you have a source for that?
Carts almost exclusively use masked roms, which should retain data indefinitley, exceptions made for electromigration, which would take centuries.

>>3658817
>>3658814
Electromigration is more of a problem than you think and it's happening much sooner than 80 years, depending on the IC. If you ever read Commodore sites like Lemon64 where they're concerned of it happening with VIC and SID chips which are 30+ years old and run pretty hot.

It may be less of a problem with Nintendo because they had pretty high quality standards.

>>3658832
http://rkirchhof.com/Electromigration.html

According to this, you may be able to revive dead chips with a quick bake in the oven...if they died from overheating, not ESD in which case the chip will just have to be thrown out.

>If you ever read Commodore sites like Lemon64 where they're concerned of it happening with VIC and SID chips which are 30+ years old and run pretty hot

NES rom chips don't run hot or for long periods of time and they sit for 1-2 decades at a time in between usage.

>>3658879
>for long periods of time

Wha, you think you can beat Dragon Quest III in 30 minutes?

It's too bad that we can't just make perfect ROM dumps and then build flash carts with the old ROMs on them that act identical to the original cartridge.

Oh wait.

Not keeping your cartridges in a static free, temperature controlled, hermetically sealed room.

Casuals.

>>3658882
No however NESes generally didn't do stuff like be running a BBS for 15 years at a time without ever being powered off.

A lot of those problems could have been avoided if Commodore had bothered heat sinking their ICs.

>>3658889
Did you know some of the early Famicoms had heat sinks on the PPU? No US model NES had that however. Apparently Nintendo were afraid of the PPU running too hot although actually it doesn't get that warm and in fact the CPU generates more heat.

>>3658889
>A lot of those problems could have been avoided if Commodore had bothered heat sinking their ICs

They definitely should have, but as Bill Herd said, "If your Commodore computer lasted longer than 3 years, I did my job wrong. They wanted to sell you a new machine."

You see, they wanted to sell low cost, throwaway computers--they really didn't take into consideration the idea that neckbeards on Lemon64 would still want to use the things 25-30 years later.

Sadly, a lot of people are reporting dead SNESes now.

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Those that are in as collectors will try to keep them working as long as possible. But when they die, they die.

Those in it for the games already have flashcarts, clone consoles can be made of practically any console.

Brazilians and children who don't give a fuck will always have emulation.

But you'd be surprised how long things last if preserved well.

>>3658787
Good thing I've literally never bought an NES cartridge and have a flash cart.

Just have to keep an eye on Atari 2600 games. When they generally start to fail then it's time to get a little more worried.
Everything will go shift but I bet that there will still be a demand for original carts

>>3658787
This is complete and total bullshit, stop posting it.

>>3658935
oh dear

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>>3658795
>he plans to live past 29

>>3658935
Source

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>>3659063
>>3659156
You can do some Google searching, but it seems to mainly be due to the lack of power line filtering on the SNES PCBs. Notice that there's very few capacitors there.

Solution: Install a 220uF 16V capacitor on the ground and output of the 7805 voltage regulator. Most SNESes have space for a second large capacitor in the back near the power/AV connectors. Stick a 1000uF 16V capacitor back there.

>>3659180
My SNES turns on but produces no video, except for some games, like Super Punch Out, where it just flashes the silver nintendo logo.

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Compare a Genesis PCB which has many capacitors and I rarely hear of them dying.

>>3658787
And by then emulation even far beyond /vr/ age will be 100% perfect plus clone consoles will be a perfect replacement because the quality of them will have raised dramatically due to the demand if this hardware apocalypse really took place. It's no cause for alarm.

THATS WHY YOU FUCKING GET MODCHIPS AND EVERDRIVES. I NEVER PAY OVER A HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR A GAME BECAUSE I FUCKING JUST BURN THEM AND THEY ARE THE SAME GAME. DO NOT WASTE MONEY ON RESELLERS. PIRATING IS THE KEY!

>>3659195
That's more likely a dirty cartridge/cartridge slot, but the best way to test if a SNES has a blown CPU is running Mario Kart because the game will totally fall to pieces.

>>3658984
>bullshit

How so? All ROM chips have a life expectancy. Go on any electronics site right now and it's listed on the specs. A typical ROM used in modern electronics will last ~200 years. Yeah, there's specialized chips that'll last way longer, but nobody uses them except maybe NASA or something since a typical circuit isn't expected to be in service for centuries.

>>3659197
Anyone can replace a capacitor.

>>3659254
While true, the point was more that the SNES has almost no power line filtering which seems to be why a lot of people are finding DOA ones now.

It's just like the earlier point about Commodore chips and heat sinks. These problems could have been avoided by not omitting a $5 component.

>>3658787
You do realize that stupid kids believe anything they read on the internet, right?

>>3658795
That's over 30 years from now

>>3658817
>source
His ass

>>3659291
>he plans to live past 40
>Thats over 30 years from now
>OP is under 10

MODS

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>>3659302
mfw I just realized that isn't OP

>>3659289
Anyone can buy some thermal paste and stick a heatsink on there

>>3659358
Would have been better to do that in 1983 rather than after the chips have been subjected to decades of their innards being slowly cooked.

>>3659195
Could be a problem of not enough power, even, Is your AC adapter stock or aftermarket. The correct output should be 10V/850mA. A lot of third party replacements only do 9V and you need to let the thing charge up, which is terrible on internal batteries because the system rapidly resets itself.

>>3659439
Well, I have a C128D right next to me with maybe a few hundred hours of use on it since it was manufactured.

>>3659489
A few hundred? That's less than two months of total use.

>>3659251
>a typical circuit isn't expected to be in service for centuries.

You ever wonder if, say 500 years from now, there will be some technology somebody is still using that is totally taken for granted, yet somehow necessary for some job that people are aware of?

It's like that French airport that was still using Windows 95 machines as servers just a few years ago.

>>3659289
>It's just like the earlier point about Commodore chips and heat sinks. These problems could have been avoided by not omitting a $5 component.
I get the impression they didn't make a big deal out of it at the time since the shit was only supposed to last 3-5 years.

>>3659527
There's still places running on Commodores. I mean, it's not exactly arcane knowledge to operate and maintain one, the documentation is everywhere and any systems programmer could learn 6502 assembly in a day.

>>3659527
>500 years from now

There's the whole "if it ain't broke don't fix it" thing, but 500 years is pushing that. Entire infrastructures are rebuilt in that time period. I don't think any systems on earth are rated for those lengths of time and eventually it's impossible to get replacement parts. And if you're talking information systems, you better have a lot of redundancy because just stray cosmic rays will be causing problems on that time scale.

well i'll just sell my junk at the 79yr mark so I will retain my investment capital

ICs that are on the verge of failing from electromigration will run abnormally hot, because as the chip interconnects weaken, there's increased voltage leaks. Eventually an interconnect will break, causing an open circuit in the IC. Apparently you can revive ICs with an open circuit by baking them in an oven (heat with no bias will re-fuse the broken interconnect). Modern ICs (since the 2000s) use copper interconnects which have a higher melting point than the traditional aluminum ones.

http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2010-09-04-fixing-an-atari-400-screen-issue.htm

This is a typical example of a chip that developed an open circuit.

>>3658939
That's a spicy meata balla.

>>3659571
The long now is working on a clock that's designed to run for 10k years. There are electronics components rated for 100+ years. We could make electronic devices that would last 500 years. If there was any point. Which there isn't. If we extend our lifespans to those sort of scales we will undoubtedly be dependent on long lasting highly redundant hardened electronics.

>>3659743
I didn't say that it was impossible to build such a thing, you have stuff like deep space probes that are dealing with extreme levels of radiation that have to cope with it in much the same way that a device on earth designed to last centuries would be engineered (lots and lots of redundancy and error correction when possible).

I don't really count something like a clock created for proof of concept purposes as a system worth mentioning in the discussion. We're obviously talking more about things in common use, like telecommunications and stuff.

>>3658787
source for this bullshit?

and even if the hardware doesn't last, the whole retro trend guarantees that replicas will be made. on top of that, there's emulation providing lots more redundancy.

>>3658795
have fun killing yourself, I guess.

>>3659527
>It's like that French airport that was still using Windows 95 machines as servers just a few years ago.
It wasn't Windows 95, but Windows NT 3.1 (all of our IT buzz websites were making articles about how they still used windows 3.1 shit like that). Also one of the line of the Paris' metro still use a DEC Alpha for it's supervision system (and some custom 68020-based piloting system).

>>3659790
>and even if the hardware doesn't last, the whole retro trend guarantees that replicas will be made

You do know that most of those Chinese NES clones are horribly inaccurate and incompatible with numerous games.

>>3660516
When everything else is gone, no one will care.

>>3660516
The Dendy was extremely accurate but I believe they actually had the schematics for the PPU/2A01 which allowed them to produce a 1v1 clone. Most modern ones are just an emulator on a chip.

It may not be possible to produce a real clone of the NES chipset anymore because they used NMOS fabrication and nobody does that now except maybe some Chinese sweatshop somewhere.

>>3660735
>It may not be possible to produce a real clone of the NES chipset anymore because they used NMOS fabrication
The well process is documented, so it's still possible to reproduce such way of manufacturing chips. It's not boiled leather or anything like that were the process have been lost.

>>3660756
The process is documented, sure, and Ricoh probably still has the schematics for the NES chipset in a file cabinet somewhere, but there's no chip fab that does NMOS nowadays.

>not freezing your carts

Has anyone ever tried to digitilize NES games so they can still be played in the future?

>>3660759
as I was saying, there's a demand for authentic hardware. if someone demands it, someone will probably supply it, that's how our economy works.

all it takes is a richfag hobbyist to make NES clones.

>>3660759
>but there's no chip fab that does NMOS nowadays.
There are ways of making DIY CMOS chips at home, so it wouldn't be that weird to assume that it's possible to make DIY NMOS chips. Also, as >>3660768 said, all it needs is enough demand for someone to take the initiative to make a real NMOS foundry.

I'd be more worried about Commodore ICs since they've never been cloned like the NES chipset and they're also not as reliable to begin with. There was a guy a few years ago who was trying to decap an SID, but he died of cancer (dude was only 29, how the fuck did that happen?).

>>3660859
>>3660770
IDK but there have been threads about that on Lemon64 and they're adamant that no, it's impossible to make an exact 1v1 VIC-II/SID nowadays because it relied on specific quirks/attributes of the NMOS process.

>>3660932
>There are ways of making DIY CMOS chips at home, so it wouldn't be that weird to assume that it's possible to make DIY NMOS chips. Also, as >>3660768 said, all it needs is enough demand for someone to take the initiative to make a real NMOS foundry.

>>3660951
>Also, as >>3660768 said, all it needs is enough demand for someone to take the initiative to make a real NMOS foundry

Scale of economics, lad. You'd have to make a few tens of thousands of chips for your operation to be profitable and there's probably not any way you could sell that many C64 chips nowadays.

You guys realize that your wrists will only last about 50 years before they break down.

>>3660768
you have no idea on how much silicon producing and testing equipment cost, let alone retro-fitting them to older fabrication processes. Shit is batshit insane and must be made profitable by extreme large numbers. Two faggots wanting a real hardware NES won't change anything.
>>3660770
>There are ways of making DIY CMOS chips at home
yeah, shitty ones. The NES chips have already quite the density, and it's costly to get the stenography to that level of precision. The only whay would be making your own laser scanning system, which is again something that few DIY hobbyist can actually purchase and actually assemble

You wouldn't manufacture ICs using 1980s processes in 2016 anyway. There's much better, more modern ways of implementing a NES.

>>3661015
The general rule of manufacturing is that you need to produce at least 10,000 of something for it to be profitable.

However, that's not the issue, the issue is chips that used obsolete fabrication processes.

>>3661051
>silicon chips
>10,000
hahah, no. With the silicon industry is in the order of the million.
>However, that's not the issue, the issue is chips that used obsolete fabrication processes.
the process itself is not the problem, the problem is that modern assembly machines cannot really be retrofitted for it and nobody makes the old machines anymore.
I wonder however if producing a modern version of the NES chips would work...we know the gate map perfectly, and it is a digital circuit, so you should be able to rebuild an analogous silicon circuit that performs the same operations at the same rates. The fact that stuff like the AVS works is a testament to that. I wonder if there are copyright problems.

>>3661059
This is true. As far as I know, the PPU doesn't contain any analog components so it shouldn't be too difficult to recreate with modern processes.

The far worse part are Commodore chips especially the SID which very much _do_ have analog parts that are impossible to implement using CMOS fabrication.

>>3661063
>This is true. As far as I know, the PPU doesn't contain any analog components so

Doesn't it use some to generate the NTSC signal?

>>3661067
>2016
>making a chip that outputs NTSC
I seriously hope...

Jesus fuck no. A modernized PPU would have to put out HDMI or something.

>>3661067
I thought the VIC-II also has some analog parts to output NTSC. Again though, that's not something you'd do in this day and age.

>>3661098
The big problem with recreating Commodore ICs is more the SID, because it has analog filters done by abusing properties of the MOSFETs. This is an intrinsic property of NMOS and cannot be done with modern fab processes. Recreating the digital portion of the SID is simple, the analog part is not and without that, you can't have an accurate SID.

>>3661115
"Accurate" SID is a little subjective because the original 6581 SID doesn't even sound consistent from chip to chip.

>>3661059
>The fact that stuff like the AVS works is a testament to that. I wonder if there are copyright problems
The patents on the NES chipset expired a while ago.

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>>3661059
>the process itself is not the problem, the problem is that modern assembly machines cannot really be retrofitted for it and nobody makes the old machines anymore.

>>3661206
are you retarded? The old chips are not necessary to make old machines, it's just that the old machines work differently from the new ones. If someone wanted to pay for costly machines that produce underpowered chips they could be fabricated easily. How is that circular?

>>3661212
>If someone wanted to pay for costly machines that produce underpowered chips they could be fabricated easily

You sure can, but modern chip fabrication won't produce an SID chip that actually works like the original or has the same performance characteristics.

>>3661229
which is totally unimportant for a digital outputting chip. I mean, it won't output NTSC but who gives a fuck? For digital chips, the fabrication method is unimportant as long as the gates can match the switching timing necessary for the circuit. We weren't talking about SIDs. ALSO, I still have to see a test where "experts" can tell blindly if a chip is an original SID chip when comparing them to FPGA recreations without an high-end oscilloscopebecause I am pretty sure that audiofools would be very disappointed

>>3661259
As explained above, there are two different models of SID--the original 6581 and the 8580. The 6581s don't even sound consistent as each batch of chips came out a little differently due to the filters and the manufacturing process used. The 8580 switched to HMOS which resulted in the chips sounding consistent, although of course they still have analog filters. But since there's only one 8580 sound, it would be easy to recreate while a 6581 is probably impossible to recreate with modern manufacturing.

The one big problem is that Commodore 64 games/demos that used digitized samples can only work on a 6581 since samples are generated with an exploit in the volume control register. That means if you boot up, say, Ghostbusters on a C64C (which had the 8580) then you won't get the "GHOSTBUSTERS!!!" speech on the title screen, you'll need a breadbin C64 with a 6581 SID for that.

I think a VIC-II would be harder to recreate accurately than an SID, not because of the analog parts used to generate NTSC, but because a hell of a lot of games and demos on the C64 rely on bugs and hardware quirks of the chip. You would literally need the original schematics, which probably don't exist anymore, or else decap one. Otherwise you could make a recreation that does all of the standard VIC-II operating modes, but it will cause lots of games to choke. Lode Runner or Pac-Man will work without a hitch, a lot of later PAL games that use advanced hardware tricks won't.

There's already a precedent for cloning the NES chipset, nobody has done it with Commodore ICs.

>>3661348
As I said, the NES chips aren't failure prone as the Commodore ones are partially because game consoles tend to lead an easier life and have less operating hours than a computer. Nobody left their NES running for 15 straight years to operate a BBS.

>>3661348
tr00

>>3658787
What if you were born before the NES gen?

>>3658935
I have a flash cart so I don't care

>>3663296
Flash carts won't help a lot when your SNES CPU is fucked.

>>3659197
interestingly the model 2 revision had horrible issues with the power plug being jarred while connected to the system cracking solder near the plug resulting in the system not powering on.

i've fixed at least 70% of the model 2 systems i have found and they all had that problem. can't beat $5 grab bag consoles that can be fixed in 5 minutes though but it also means just as many or more are just outright thrown away.

>>3658935
>Sadly, a lot of kids believe everything they read on the internet.

>>3663447
By the time SNES CPUs become scarce a band new one will cost only one replicator credit.

>>3659197
The Genny has fewer proprietary components; almost everything in there is off-the-shelf. Also it has a completely stock 68000 CPU while the SNES has a customized 65816 that incorporates the CPU, I/O, and DMA on one chip.

Only potential problem is that it has ZIFF socket DRAMs for the video which are a kind of rare chip type.

Did you know human being have a limited lifespan?

>>3660859
>decap a SID
>die of cancer

was it made of uranium?

>>3659527

Human beings won't be around in 500 years.

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>Your face when this is the only future.

This guy ran his snes over 180k hours

http://www.polygon.com/nintendo/2016/1/2/10701068/snes-powered-on-20-years-gamesave-data

>>3658787
All good things must come to an end, faggot.

>>3664815
>Your face when this is the only future.

I gave up on owning cartridges long ago. It's not so much the outrageous scalping, but the fact that it's too much trouble to maintain cartridges in good condition. i.e. They're prone to permanent discoloration, brown spots and plastic swelling, and the batteries are fucking soldered onto the board. The discoloration be temporarily reversed, but then it comes right back.

So yeah, I just emulate everything on a single-board computer attached to my TV. It's not quite the same experience, but it's better than stressing over inevitable cartridge failures and cosmetic damage.

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>>3658787
So we replace them with freshly flashed EPROMs when that happens. Not an ideal solution but functional.

>>3666965
I just came here to post this.

>>3660859
>how the fuck did that happen?
they were on to him

>>3658787
>buyfags BTFO
>authenticfags BTFO
I can die happy

>>3660859
>>3667856
SwinSID is a viable alternative to the SID chip, although naturally fans of the original breadbox C64 prefer the sound of the original chip.

>>3659571
there are bridges and walls and fountains that have lasted that long or nearly that long, although they're small on the scale of a nation's infrastructure
who knows what things from today will last 100, 300, 500... 700 years?
I think in a "ship of Theseus" sense, a lot of our current infrastructure will be around that long, and we might find pieces (likely not electronic pieces though) that are much older than you'd expect
for example a telephone pole in a place with mild weather and no earthquakes may not need to be replaced for ages

>>3661082
but muh accurate color

>>3668910
It depends. Some Commodorefags will buy any new/repro hardware, sometimes even with expanded capabilities. These are what you call "fantasyfags" who want to do all the things they wish the original hardware could have done. And then there's purists who think anything but the original is witchcraft.

The thing is, as explained earlier, it's impossible to exactly reproduce the original chips because they relied on specific quirks of the outmoded 1970s manufacturing processes that Commodore used. I mean, MOS's fabrication tech was already outdated by the early 80s, they didn't modernize as well as they should have.

>>3669945
If I had the money I would totally buy a C64 Reloaded board and a Chameleon 64 cartridge. Problem is that it would cost as much as a new computer and I just don't have the cash for it right now. I had fun repairing the breadbin that I adopted, though.

>>3668910
>although naturally fans of the original breadbox C64 prefer the sound of the original chip

The 6581 SID doesn't even sound consistent from chip to chip because of the analog filters and imperfect manufacturing process; every batch of chips sounded a little different. The 8580s all do sound the same.

As for which one is better, the two have different strengths and weaknesses. Some stuff that sounds good on the 6581 doesn't sound good on the 8580 and vice versa.

>>3670056
I know the story-- the 6581 gets its sound from somewhat janky manufacturing. Some people really like and value the unique way it sounds while others would rather have consistency. I do appreciate the fact that I've got a bread box with a working 6581 inside it though.

Unfortunately, the 6581s are more fragile and have a higher failure rate than the 8580 due to the filters getting easily damaged by ESD and because they run hotter.

There was one autistic German on Lemon64 who said that he'd tested 1000 different SIDs and could attest that they did sound different, although in some chips the difference was too subtle to detect.

You can't get digitized samples on the 8580 because they're done via an exploit in the 6581 done by oscillating the volume control register rapidly.

>>3669918
>ntsc
>"never the same color twice"

>>3670181
that's a total lie
http://sid.kubarth.com/articles/the_c64_digi.txt
>Boosting 8580 Digis

tl;dr: you can make the SID generate a biased signal and the rest of the routine would be the same thing you did on the 6581

>>3658787
Nothing lasts forever. Enjoy what you had when you had it and blah blah

>>3670394
Maybe, but most speech synthesis software on the C64 was designed around the volume control trick, thus games like Ghostbusters with digitized speech will be silent if run on an 8580 SID.

>>3670423
also, there's a hardware mod you can do to get software written before they realized you can do it on 8580 to play samples

>To fix this in hardware, people use a simple hack: take a resistor of about
330k and tie the SID EXTIN line to GND through that (directly, beside the
chip, on the mainboard).
it's not perfect (read the rest of it), but the 8580 was going to sound different anyway

>>3658974
>haven't bought a NES cartridge
>but I own a NES cartridge
This was one of the dumber comments I've read today, so thanks for that.

>>3670394
so if it was the same color twice it wouldn't be accurate!