Urban Legend Confirmed ET Cartridges Found In New Mexico Desert

[Sionyn]

here we are
http://twitter.com/majornelson/status/460136737944399872/photo/1

[David Hess]

This is an old story and not the first expedition to dig up that land fill and find the cartridges.

[miguelvp]

Awesome!

Many have tried before and failed!

[Homer J Simpson]

Here is another story on this with a little more detail.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/diggers-find-atari-infamous-e-t-game-cartridges-landfill-article-1.1770182

Pretty interesting story. A lot of people said it did not actually happen.

Also interesting no employees to my knowledge from Atari ever came forward with it.


Another one I would like to see dug up are the Apple Lisas.

[XOIIO]

Here is another story on this with a little more detail.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/diggers-find-atari-infamous-e-t-game-cartridges-landfill-article-1.1770182

Pretty interesting story. A lot of people said it did not actually happen.

Also interesting no employees to my knowledge from Atari ever came forward with it.


Another one I would like to see dug are the Apple Lisa's.

They buried those too?

[Homer J Simpson]

From Wikipedia on the Apple Lisa.

"With the help of Sun Remarketing in 1989, Apple disposed of approximately 2,700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill in Logan, Utah, in order to receive a tax write-off on the unsold inventory."

[EEVblog]

How did it cost $125M to produce this game?
It has one programmer who was paid $200K, and they ordered several million cartridges produced.
The rest was rights to the ET brand?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)

[Skimask]

Don't know what the big deal is...
I've still got my Atari 2600 and E.T.
Should dig it out and see if it still works...

[XOIIO]

From Wikipedia on the Apple Lisa.

"With the help of Sun Remarketing in 1989, Apple disposed of approximately 2,700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill in Logan, Utah, in order to receive a tax write-off on the unsold inventory."

A tax write off? really? That seems kind of stupid.

[justanothercanuck]

This is kindof neat, although somehow I doubt any of the cartridges will still work.  Even the one shown in pictures has a cracked casing.  All the contacts and pins are probably corroded, and the PCB is probably broken on the insides.

This is an old story and not the first expedition to dig up that land fill and find the cartridges.

Source?

[TerraHertz]

From Wikipedia on the Apple Lisa.

"With the help of Sun Remarketing in 1989, Apple disposed of approximately 2,700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill in Logan, Utah, in order to receive a tax write-off on the unsold inventory."

I would bet that they ran over them with a bulldozer before burying them too. Just burying doesn't seem to be close enough to 'destroyed' for the official mind. It sure looks like the packets of those Atari games were torn open roughly before burying.

A tax write off? really? That seems kind of stupid.

Ha ha... From the point of view of the kind of people that do things like this, to allow the products to get to market, be given away, or stored somewhere for eventual distribution decades later, would seem bizarre, unfathomable. "Of course they have to be destroyed! Nothing else would make any sense!"
I like the company name - 'Sun Remarketting'. What a piece of double think that is.

Hey, talking of treasures buried in landfills, here in Sydney there was a famous and old TV station - Channel 7 in Epping. They had a huge library of broadcast quality video tapes - all the programs they had aired through their history. All the news programs, sports broadcasts, motor races, locally produced soapies, etc.

A little way down the large open site the Channel 7 studios occupied, just downhill from the staff car park, there was a small gully. By some process of management decision making a while after 2001, it was decided to build a tennis court where the gully was. Oh, and to fill it in, they'd dump all the the tons of videotapes from the Channel 7 archives in, then cover with dirt. Which they did. No more pesky tape archive.  Those tapes were big 1" and 2" wide tape, reel to reel things, in plastic cases.
And so, a priceless library of Australian cultural history became landfill.
Oh, and did I mention tapes of the original satellite feeds? Live broadcasts from significant international events, such as... you can guess. It's amazing how many of _those_ archives around the world just happen to have been 'lost' since 2001. Even the BBC, who's official policy is to keep two backup copies of all that sort of thing, turn out to have 'lost' all of some particular tapes. (You can probably figure it out with google. If I mention dates here this will be deleted.)

Some time later the Ch7 landfill subsided, and a large crack opened up across the tennis court. Which was never repaired, and was still there when the Ch 7 studios in Epping were closed, and the site sold to Meriton in 2010.
Apparently actually having a tennis court wasn't so important, since it couldn't have cost much to repair the crack.

Meriton proceeded to build obnoxiously high apartment towers on the site, with no doubt, a great deal of graft involved. The state government wrenched planning authority out of the hands of the local council, in order to ensure Meriton got their wishes, and f*ck the nearby residents.

The story of the tapes was told to me by people who worked at the studio at the time, and saw it happen.
In my opinion, the people who landfilled those tapes should be lined up against a wall and shot. It's much, much worse than burying a few thousand Lisas. Though that is bad enough.

Here's the tennis court tape burial site, shot while the studio was still operating:
  https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-33.782355,151.069272&spn=0.00163,0.002135&t=h&z=19

Pic below is the tennis court, at the time the Studios were being demolished. One of the Ch7 Aussat downlink dishes can be seen in the background. By which Ch7 received international raw news feeds directly.

[amyk]

This is kindof neat, although somehow I doubt any of the cartridges will still work.  Even the one shown in pictures has a cracked casing.  All the contacts and pins are probably corroded, and the PCB is probably broken on the insides.

On the other hand, the inside silicon is probably still fine - low-density masked ROM is relatively durable.

[Kjelt]

How did it cost $125M to produce this game?
It has one programmer who was paid $200K, and they ordered several million cartridges produced.
The rest was rights to the ET brand?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)

As far as the four sources I read today go:

To produce the game cost +/- $25M:  $22M to Spielberg for the rights, $3M for the development, marketing and production/distribution.
They sold 1,5 million copies netting $25M so at that point they broke even.

Then people were mad because the game s*cked and they had the right to return the game to the manufacturer and get refunded. That whole operation of returning and refunding including paying postage etc. cost (estimated) $100M, including the discarding of the +3M copies that were unsold.

These digs were made for a new documentary about the games industry but there are already two very nice documentaries about this:
Video game invasion
Rise of the video game

Other videos about the subject:
http://www.heavy.com/games/2013/07/know-your-history-the-15-best-video-game-documentaries/

[David Hess]

This is kindof neat, although somehow I doubt any of the cartridges will still work.  Even the one shown in pictures has a cracked casing.  All the contacts and pins are probably corroded, and the PCB is probably broken on the insides.

On the other hand, the inside silicon is probably still fine - low-density masked ROM is relatively durable.

Oddly enough, over the long term masked ROM is often less reliable than EPROM.

[TerraHertz]

Oddly enough, over the long term masked ROM is often less reliable than EPROM.

Huh? Considering that EPROM almost always drops bits sometime less than 15 years on, yet I've seen most things with mask ROMs just keep going indefinitely, that's hard to believe. Your experience has been different?

[SeanB]

Probably mask ROM might have issues with the final mask not being the best aligned, as they were often made as blank wafers just missing the final metallisation, and then stored until the final mask was etched, so there was a chance for them to pick up contaminants. EPROM is made and sealed pretty fast, so there is less chance for contamination from long storage. I used EPROM that was regularly exposed to aircraft use, and even after 40 years they were the most reliable card, I never had one with a faulty bit. All 2708 EPROM as well, with the need for 3 supply voltages to just read, and needing a 26V pulse to program them.

[deth502]

i had (still have..... somewhere) an atari and the e.t game. it did suck out loud.

A tax write off? really? That seems kind of stupid.

really. thats how our great govt works. isint it grand? they forcefully take your tax money from you (and is you disagree that it is taken by force, stop paying your taxes and see what happens) and if someone makes a fucking shit product that no one wants, and cant sell them, the govt then takes your money and buys them for you (only you never actually get anything) because they kow what is best for everyone, and we are all just too fucking stupid to make a free market run by ourselves.

[tom66]

Ah - the free market - what a wonderful idea. That's worked really well for the US internet & cable industry. Comcast now owns nearly 80% of it.

[David Hess]

Oddly enough, over the long term masked ROM is often less reliable than EPROM.

Huh? Considering that EPROM almost always drops bits sometime less than 15 years on, yet I've seen most things with mask ROMs just keep going indefinitely, that's hard to believe. Your experience has been different?

I have yet to have an old EPROM fail but lots of equally old mask ROMs (and antifused based memories) of the same age are known to have problems.  MOSTEK mask ROMs using the 2364 pinout are known for this in various test instruments and video games in the 20+ year range.

The specified EPROM life of 20 years was a conservative lower limit.

[TerraHertz]

Probably mask ROM might have issues with the final mask not being the best aligned, as they were often made as blank wafers just missing the final metallisation, and then stored until the final mask was etched, so there was a chance for them to pick up contaminants. EPROM is made and sealed pretty fast, so there is less chance for contamination from long storage. I used EPROM that was regularly exposed to aircraft use, and even after 40 years they were the most reliable card, I never had one with a faulty bit. All 2708 EPROM as well, with the need for 3 supply voltages to just read, and needing a 26V pulse to program them.

2708s still good after 40 years?! I... that just does not fit with my experience of EPROMs. (Arcade gaming machines, plus general use.) Are you sure someone wasn't regularly reprogramming those cards, as part of the maintenance program?

[David Hess]

Probably mask ROM might have issues with the final mask not being the best aligned, as they were often made as blank wafers just missing the final metallisation, and then stored until the final mask was etched, so there was a chance for them to pick up contaminants. EPROM is made and sealed pretty fast, so there is less chance for contamination from long storage. I used EPROM that was regularly exposed to aircraft use, and even after 40 years they were the most reliable card, I never had one with a faulty bit. All 2708 EPROM as well, with the need for 3 supply voltages to just read, and needing a 26V pulse to program them.

The hermetic ceramic packages used for EPROMs to support the quartz erase window probably contribute to their reliably although I have not heard of problems with plastic packaged OTP EPROMs yet.

Lots of old multimeters and other test instruments like DSOs and logic analyzers which use MOSTEK mask ROMs starting having failures years ago.  Antifuse based programmable logic is also known to fail because the fuses "regrow".

The problem is bad enough that products like this exist:

http://store.go4retro.com/2364-adapter/

[SeanB]

Probably mask ROM might have issues with the final mask not being the best aligned, as they were often made as blank wafers just missing the final metallisation, and then stored until the final mask was etched, so there was a chance for them to pick up contaminants. EPROM is made and sealed pretty fast, so there is less chance for contamination from long storage. I used EPROM that was regularly exposed to aircraft use, and even after 40 years they were the most reliable card, I never had one with a faulty bit. All 2708 EPROM as well, with the need for 3 supply voltages to just read, and needing a 26V pulse to program them.

Arcade machines are a special case, as often the EPROMS do not have an opaque cover over the window so light does not penetrate, which will eventually degrade a few cells. Even a paper label will let some light through, and as the arcades often had UV lamps and flourescent and mercury containing neon lighting they would have had enough UV light to erase the rom with time. Only labels that are not going to admit light are the adhesive backed aluminium style label, and these generally were not used for cost reasons.

Fusible link proms are horrid, they fail in all sorts of ways, either regrowing the fuse from the silicon relaxing, or going open from electromigration. I did program a few small ones that were in the test bench, using a breadboard, some jumper wires and a power supply to blow the fuses as needed. Luckily it only needed around 32 bits or so per device, and we had the fuse maps all printed out in the manual. Some of the equipment even used core memory. You could fix that with care, simply by wiring in a new core to replace a failed one using some bodge wiring across the plane.
2708s still good after 40 years?! I... that just does not fit with my experience of EPROMs. (Arcade gaming machines, plus general use.) Are you sure someone wasn't regularly reprogramming those cards, as part of the maintenance program?