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An Incredible test of strength!
Exactly how durable are Atari cartridges? I thought I'd see for myself. So, I took a Combat cartridge that was made in the 32nd week of 1981. You can tell by reading a little number code printed on the ROM. I did some experiments on it to see how much abuse it could take and still work.
I took the cartridge and dropped it out of my second story window onto the cement sidewalk five times. The plastic part of the cart was in pieces, but the game still worked. Then, I put the cartridge back together as best I could and put it out in the street.
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It got run over by a jeep. I took it inside and it still worked. At this point, there was nothing left but the PCB with the ROM soldered on it and a metal cover that went over the ROM.
I then put the PCB in boiling water for five minutes,
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took it out and immediately packed it in a snowball that I made out of frost from my freezer. After five minutes, I broke all the ice off the PCB and ROM and plugged it into my Atari. It worked!
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What could I do next?
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I have this magnet that's very strong. If I hold it within about 1.5 feet from a TV screen, all the color gets sucked to one side of the screen! Well, I took that magnet and rubbed it all over the PCB and ROM. Plugged it in, and it worked!
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I then took a lighter and held the ROM right above the flame. I left it there for a few minutes until the ROM was smoking and giving off a nasty smell. I cleaned off all the soot and plugged it in and it still worked.
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No more Mr. Nice Guy!
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I took it outside and three cars ran over it,
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threw it up as high as I could and had it land on the cement twice, and I threw it down onto the cement as hard as I could twice. At this point, the metal cover that goes over the ROM had broken off, the PCB was chipped on all the corners, the ROM was smashed onto the PCB so that the pins were all squished on one side and were being pulled out of the solder on the other side. I had to straighten out the pins so that none were touching each other and I had to hold the PCB together in one place so that the metal contacts would be in the right place when I plugged the game in. Guess what...it still worked!
This cartridge had taken heat and cold extremes, shock and magnetism.
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Next up was electricity. I took the Atari power supply (9V, 300mA) and connected some alligator clips to the output terminals of the power supply. Then, I rubbed the other end of the alligator clips across the metal contacts of the game's PCB. I tried a bunch of different combinations and always had both alligator clips touching the PCB contacts so that electricity would be flowing. I plugged the game back in and much to my surprise, it still worked!
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Lastly, I grabbed my hammer, rested the game down on the cement, and gave it a good smack. The ROM cracked right in half, breaking the silicon wafer.
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I plugged the game in and, of course, it did not survive the last test of durability. It took all that abuse to ruin a 13 year old Atari game. I'd say they're pretty durable!
Source: 2600 Connection
1994, Issue 23, page 8
Written by: John Earney
The images arenot the original images of the article, asthey were not available on wayback. So, itook some licence and added what I thought may be appropiate. I think the durability was proven.
