00:08 hello and welcome to another episode for
00:10 the 8-bit guy in previous episodes we
00:12 have discussed floppy disks and tape
00:15 games today we're going to talk about
00:17 cartridge games the very first games
00:21 were distributed on cartridge format for
00:23 the Fairchild channel layout soon after
00:25 on the Atari 2600 ROM cartridges were
00:30 used in all kinds of systems such as the
00:32 Speak & Spell music keyboards and even
00:35 game systems of newest a Nintendo 64
00:38 I have also invited the obsolete geek to
00:41 come over and show you some of his
00:42 collection so I am a huge fan of
00:45 cartridges and cartridge based systems a
00:47 couple of my favorites obviously the Neo
00:49 Geo an arcade based platform which has
00:52 absolutely massive cartridges which are
00:56 to be a little tricky to plug in also
01:00 another one of my favorites the turbo
01:02 graphics also known as the pc engine in
01:05 japan which has these really cool credit
01:08 cards shaped cartridges also very unique
01:11 as a kid with my commodore vic-20
01:14 I was obsessed with trying to copy a
01:16 game cartridge to tape you see I believe
01:19 that the game was somehow loaded into
01:21 the computer's memory much like a game
01:22 would be from disk and I had noticed
01:25 that if I pulled out the cartridge game
01:26 while the computer was on most of the
01:29 time it would lock up
01:31 I noticed that every now and then when I
01:34 pull the cartridge out the computer
01:35 would return to a ready prompt and so
01:38 then I would attempt to save the game to
01:40 tape of course it never worked and the
01:42 main reason it didn't work is due to my
01:44 complete misunderstanding of how these
01:46 games work so the sixth 5:02 processor
01:49 could only access 64 K of memory so for
01:53 these examples I'm going to be talking
01:54 mostly about the calibre of ik 20 here
01:56 because it has a simple memory map
01:58 that's really easy to understand so you
02:01 might imagine the memory map looking
02:03 something like this keep in mind there
02:05 are two types of computer memory RAM
02:07 known as random access memory and of
02:09 course ROM known as read-only memory so
02:12 the vic-20 only had 5 K of RAM and thus
02:17 the memory map looked more similar to
02:19 this so the kernel and basic ROM were at
02:21 the top of the memory map and 5 K Ram
02:23 was at the bottom there was a lot of
02:26 empty space where if the processor tried
02:28 to read and write to the area that was
02:29 simply nothing there so when you insert
02:32 a cartridge it literally adds this
02:34 additional memory into the main memory
02:35 map of the computer adding to the total
02:37 amount of memory in the system in this
02:40 case an 8 kilobyte game cartridge is
02:42 adding read-only memory but you can also
02:44 add an 8 kilobyte memory expansion
02:46 cartridge which will add Ram to the
02:48 machine instead some of the cartridges
02:50 even had 16 K of ROM or Ram
02:53 but once the cartridge is removed the
02:55 information is no longer visible to the
02:57 CPU hence why I was never able to save
03:00 those Pekka game cartridges to a tape or
03:02 disk as a kid now on a modern computer
03:04 most of us are familiar with what it
03:06 looks like to add some RAM expansion but
03:09 aside from the BIOS chip modern
03:11 computers really don't have any ROM
03:13 chips or ROM sockets because they pretty
03:16 much expect all software to be loaded
03:18 from either disk or USB or something
03:21 like that so even though the vic-20 has
03:23 5k of ram it really can only use about
03:26 three and a half K because the rest of
03:28 that memory is used for screen memory
03:30 and some other kernel functions so if
03:32 you load a game from tape or disk the
03:35 maximum size of that game will be
03:36 limited to about three and a half K and
03:39 these sort of games that learn it into
03:42 the Vic were usually extremely primitive
03:54 but a cartridge game can be as much as
03:57 16 K and so the games can be
03:58 considerably more complex with more
04:00 graphics etc so in the case of the
04:13 vic-20 cartridge games were usually
04:23 so that's the Commodore vic-20 but a few
04:26 years later the Commodore 64 came out
04:28 with 64 K of RAM and this changed things
04:30 up a bit you see a cartridge in the c64
04:33 is still limited to 16 K and the games
04:36 are on these cartridges weren't
04:37 necessarily bad but they were limited
04:40 mostly to the classic type arcade games
05:25 but when you load a game from disk
05:27 suddenly you can use almost all of the
05:29 machines 64k which means the games can
05:32 be even more rich and complex
05:50 the original Atari computers tell a
05:53 similar story the 400 and 800 both
05:55 shipped with a K of RAM so the vast
05:58 majority of games were released on
05:59 cartridge these systems were designed
06:02 with the slot on the top much like a
06:04 game console which suggests they
06:06 expected most games would be on
06:07 cartridge so interestingly enough the
06:10 Atari 800 actually has two cartridge
06:12 slots one alms labeled left cartridge
06:14 and the other is labeled right cartridge
06:15 now all of the cartridges I have are
06:17 actually they say left cartridge right
06:19 on the wrong cartridge now I don't think
06:23 that the right cartridge was really ever
06:25 used for much in fact they got rid of it
06:27 on all of the later models of Atari but
06:30 I think the idea was back at this time
06:32 was that the machines at 16k of RAM so
06:35 they would I think they were thinking
06:37 that you could load like a primary
06:39 cartridge in one socket and then the
06:42 other socket could be used like as some
06:44 kind of addition like let's say for
06:46 example you had like a music or an art
06:48 program or something you could put it in
06:50 here and then if you had actual pieces
06:52 of music or artwork or something that
06:54 might be like on a secondary cartridge
06:56 that would go along with that maybe I
06:58 don't know not totally sure what they
07:00 were thinking most all of the early
07:02 classic games are available on cartridge
07:04 but by the time later systems came out
07:06 with the 64 K most all software was
07:08 being distributed on floppy disk
07:10 however the cartridge slot was still
07:12 prominently displayed on the top of the
07:14 machine except for the 130 XE which was
07:16 more similar to a Commodore
07:19 interestingly enough Atari took one last
07:22 shot cartridges with the release of the
07:24 XE game system which was fully
07:26 compatible with all previous Atari
07:27 computers but seem to emphasize the game
07:29 console aspect since it could be used
07:31 with or without the keyboard attached
07:33 and the games were expected to be loaded
07:35 by cartridge however very few new games
07:37 release forward on cartridges so it was
07:49 technically possible to put more than 16
07:51 K in a game cartridge for these systems
07:53 but since the memory window given to
07:55 these cartridges was only 16 K wide the
07:58 only way to accomplish that was to add
07:59 additional hardware into the cartridge
08:01 that would allow Bank switching so that
08:04 way only 16 K is visible to the computer
08:06 and the game software can switch around
08:08 which sections need to be used at
08:10 different parts during the game many
08:12 Nintendo cartridges did this with
08:13 minigames including as much as one
08:15 megabyte of ROM which was a substantial
08:18 amount of data for the time however this
08:20 technique was rarely used on cartridges
08:23 for computer systems because ultimately
08:24 it was just cheaper to put the software
08:26 on a floppy disk another interesting
08:29 note is that not all computer systems
08:31 even have ROM sockets for example the
08:34 Apple 2 series never included games on
08:36 ROM cartridges although technically
08:38 speaking it has the equivalent of a
08:40 trompe sockets inside which were used
08:42 for expansion technically you could have
08:44 designed a game to work in one of these
08:46 but in practice it was never done the
08:48 same can be said for the IBM PC although
08:50 the PC jr. did have cartridge sockets so
08:54 a common thing to see back in the 1980s
08:56 was someone blowing inside of a Nintendo
09:01 ROM cartridge now honestly I've never
09:04 actually seen that that does any good
09:05 unless there's like visible like dust
09:07 bunnies or hair or something in there
09:09 that you're trying to blow out for the
09:12 most part it's just corroded contacts
09:14 and I think it's more of a placebo
09:16 effect to blow into it I think what's
09:18 really helping is just the removal of
09:20 the cartridge and putting it back in
09:22 which is helping to scrape a little bit
09:24 of the corrosion off of the copper
09:27 but honestly once the game gets old you
09:29 really need to give the contacts of
09:31 proper cleaning the internet is full of
09:33 solutions to this but my preferred
09:35 solution is to let the contacts sit in
09:37 vinegar for a few hours to eat away the
09:39 corrosion however sometimes I've had
09:41 luck using baking soda since it acts
09:43 like an abrasive so cartridge games were
09:46 a lot more difficult to pirate but on
09:49 the bright side at least there wasn't
09:50 all that much need to make backup copies
09:52 because the darn things were practically
09:54 indestructible so cartridges have two
09:57 advantages over other types of media
09:59 such as floppy disk or even cd-rom the
10:02 first is of course that they're instant
10:04 on there's no wait time in order to load
10:06 the information but the second thing and
10:08 this is something a lot of people don't
10:09 realize is that cartridges can contain
10:12 other things besides just information
10:15 they can actually contain extra hardware
10:17 that make the console more capable I'm
10:20 gonna let the obsolete geek explain it
10:22 further pitfall 2 which was released on
10:25 the Atari 2600 was revolutionary for the
10:27 console the gameplay was considerably
10:30 more complex in other games as well as
10:32 it included a soundtrack that played
10:33 throughout the entire game a first for
10:36 the platform it achieved this by adding
10:39 a specialized chip known as a DSP chip
10:42 inside of the game cartridge that gave
10:44 the system more capabilities than the
10:45 atari 2600 was ever designed to do this
10:48 practice was also used in other systems
10:50 the Nintendo for example contains two
10:53 kilobytes of onboard RAM but a game
10:55 cartridge may contain additional RAM to
10:57 increase this amount if needed this is
10:59 the Japanese version of the nintendo
11:01 entertainment system also known as the
11:03 Famicom in Japan while the electric
11:06 components are very similar to an NES
11:07 and the cartridges in Japan are a little
11:10 bit smaller there was one key difference
11:12 at some games such as Castlevania 3 had
11:15 in which case this game has an
11:17 additional sound chip which adds a
11:19 couple of extra voices to the NES is
11:21 original sound chip
11:31 you can clearly hear the differences
11:41 in fact while the cartridges might be
11:43 shaped differently you can buy an
11:45 adapter which will allow you to plug
11:48 although because of the way the console
11:50 is wired you will not get the additional
11:52 sound without a couple of easy
11:53 modifications the Super Nintendo was
11:56 actually designed to take advantage of
11:58 additional hardware and the cartridges
11:59 as needed so let's take a look at these
12:01 two games for example stunt race FX
12:04 contains a coprocessor called the super
12:07 FX which assists the SNES with 3d
12:12 have you ever played the original
12:13 starfox it also uses the super FX chip
12:20 Super Mario RPG used a chip called the
12:22 si one which actually contains a CPU
12:25 core similar to what's in the Super
12:27 Nintendo but is operating at a much
12:29 faster speed hardware add-ons were very
12:32 common in Super Nintendo games so the
12:35 Atari 7800 was considerably more
12:37 advanced than the 2600 but they kept the
12:41 to voice sound hardware from the 2600
12:44 however some games actually added the
12:47 pokey sound chip from the Atari computer
12:49 line into the actual game cartridges
12:52 this is one example ball blazer you can
12:55 hear that it actually has a far more
12:57 sophisticated now trend within most 7800
13:00 games so one interesting thing about
13:05 cartridges is that each manufacturer had
13:08 like their own design or a particular
13:10 appearance to their cartridges all that
13:12 mattered is that it could fit into the
13:14 machine but that we're free to shape the
13:16 rest of it however they wanted so take a
13:18 look at all these cartridges for the
13:19 Atari 8-bit computer line all of the
13:22 Atari branded ones have this same design
13:24 admittedly I sort of like the appearance
13:26 and especially the metal plate covering
13:28 the back of the top but Activision for
13:30 example use an entirely different shape
13:32 for their cartridges on the same
13:34 platform however the story is not always
13:37 the same from one platform to the next
13:39 for example all Nintendo cartridges look
13:41 more or less exactly the same no matter
13:43 what company made them well guys I hope
13:46 you enjoyed this and I'll see you next
![Welp, Here's what the Fed *Just* Said [Fed FOMC Minutes]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fl8u23oq1E9E%2Fhqdefault.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
