Preserving Retro Technology: The Challenges of Maintaining CD/DVD and Video Game Collections

I have also had (image) issues with pressed DVDs, I have not touched my DVD collection for so long, but after 24 years of DVD there must be something more lost.

CD/DVDs can be damaged, but they do contain some degree of error correcting codes so that not every scratch or reading error immediately leads to a bad image.
So far I’ve actually only had 1 failure with a pressed CD (a manufacturer in the UK didn’t get the composition right which caused rust). Almost all the old stuff I have lying around plays fine.

It’s nice that your 40-year-old (complete) NES collection worked perfectly after all these years (with quite a bit of maintenance), but one major leak in the wrong place and you’re screwed.

Preservation is of course not only about your own collection, but also about ensuring that there are sufficient redundant copies of titles in circulation. Something that is only offered digitally for streaming is only stored in a very limited number of places.

Those memory chips also simply degrade, there are plenty of the even older Atari 2600 cartridges that no longer work (correctly).

Not too bad, especially because a process was used when manufacturing ROM chips in which fuses are ‘burned out’, which is quite permanent. There is then no charge that slowly disappears as with later erasable PROM and flash memories.
Almost all of my 2600 games still work.

In addition, you also have to worry about affordability and usability. Just try connecting an unmodded Atari 2600 to a modern LCD display without special hardware.

Even modern TVs often still have analog RF antenna inputs. So in principle that Atari is just as useful as before.

A playable Atari 2600 “Air Raid” cartridge now sells for $10,000+…

That is of course an outlier and not an argument that it is problematic from a cost perspective. Sales prices of Atari 2600 games average around 2 euros each.
2024-04-07 11:13:19
#Xbox #creates #team #dedicated #gaming #preservation