Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#2I think like most people, when I think of cartridges I think of Nintendo.
I always wondered why they hung onto cartridges for as long as they did.
One advantage of cartridges over discs is that you can put specialized chips on the carts that each game can take advantage of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_c...
At the bottom of the above link you'll see a list of super Nintendo games that used extra chips. The list is astonishingly long.
Of course this was back when most
1) things were done is software
2) these chips were cheap
3) RAM and data bus connections were much faster relative to the CPU than they are now.
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#3I still to this day don't understand why blowing on the cartridges would make them work. It boggles my mind every time I think back to my childhood.
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#4I still to this day don't understand why blowing on the cartridges would make them work. It boggles my mind every time I think back to my childhood.
Simple. Hair and dust get to cover the electrical contacts of the cartridges. Blowing removes it.
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#5Black or white, could you get a job as a self-taught engineer today?
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#6I think like most people, when I think of cartridges I think of Nintendo. I always wondered why they hung onto cartridges for as long as they did. One advantage of cartridges over discs is that you can put specialized chips on the carts that each game can take advantage of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_c... At the bottom of the above link you'll see a list of super Nintendo games that us…
"I always wondered why they hung onto cartridges for as long as they did."
As far as I remember, people did not like optical media.
When Sega added a new optical attachment for their Sega Genesis, nobody bought it.
Optical media required loading. Interactivity was lost. You had "Dragon's Lair" kind of games that had tremendous quality but felt prefabricated.
It was only much later with he first PSP that people started using them, after PC era of CD shareware like doom or dune. The advantages(immense amount of memory, distribution easiness, and PIRACY) overcame their drawbacks.
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#7Black or white, could you get a job as a self-taught engineer today?
Yes, I have no degrees, no certs, and before becoming self-employed, I worked at two megacorps (an insurance company and a telecom equipment manufacturer) for a total of ten years, and had 'Engineer' on my business cards.
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#8I still to this day don't understand why blowing on the cartridges would make them work. It boggles my mind every time I think back to my childhood.
Simple. Hair and dust get to cover the electrical contacts of the cartridges. Blowing removes it.
Yes, this is true, but the child in me wants to also believe it was "magic".
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#9I think like most people, when I think of cartridges I think of Nintendo. I always wondered why they hung onto cartridges for as long as they did. One advantage of cartridges over discs is that you can put specialized chips on the carts that each game can take advantage of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_c... At the bottom of the above link you'll see a list of super Nintendo games that us…
Cartridges were also really durable. Back when people didn't have many electronics, cartridges helped defend the chips inside. Atari and Nintendo were essentially 'toys' back then. You could toss a cartridge around but not a disc.
Nowadays, any physical disc or cartridge is a pain. Digital games are the only way like Steam.
Re: Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
#10Black or white, could you get a job as a self-taught engineer today?
Are we talking about engineering or "software engineering"?. I'm a "software engineer", and what I actually do is web development, completely self taught. There are about a million ways you could teach yourself the skillset that I have.
I don't see how that compares to something like nuclear engineering or chemical engineering. No one teaches themselves to build nuclear reactors, and no one is going to get a job in that field as an autodidact unless they have already worked in a closely related field.