Game Storage Mediums
Y'know, like Optical disk, digital versatile disk (DVD), universal media disk, (UMD) and so on. Game storage mediums refers to different things that games can be stored on, why specifically games storage? I don;t know, but that's what I'm writing about.
Cartridges
Cartridges were the first things games were stored on, that you could move around separate to the machine you played them on. There is a printed circuit board or PCB on cartridges, and a connector is included in the cartridge (so that it can be used with a console) as well as a plastic case to protect everything. The games software would be stored on a read only memory or ROM chip, and additional hardware may be stored in each and every separate cartridge, in addition to things like extra RAM (random access memory). Once a cartridge was plugged into a console, the console could then use its data and stuff, unlike magnetic tape or optical disks, that would need to be loaded from the external storage medium. The sturdy and robust cartridges were less susceptible to damage than other storage mediums such as cassette tapes, floppy disks and optical media, but manufacturing costs were high in comparison to these other more easily damaged storage devices. Cartridges were eventually killed off by the superior CD-ROM and DVD-ROM's as these could store way more data, and were much more cheap to manufacture and produce.
Magnetic TapeWay back in the old timey days, (like early 1980's) programs were sometimes stored on cassette tapes and used through them, but they were also sometimes used for games because of availability and cost - they were cheap to make, and widely available. The tape stored memory on it via binary code, but in the form of audio pulses, pulses of different lengths, that were either a one or a zero. Loading times weren't grate, around 7 minutes usually. These magnetic tapes were very susceptible to damage, and were easily breakable, even compared to it's competition at the time this was the specifically weak and frail one (its competition being cartridges and floppy disks).
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Floppy DiskThe floppy disk drive (FDD) first made an appearance in the late 1960's and was the accepted norm for when it was being used. the first ones could hold 360 kilobytes of data. I know... amazing right? We'd never need more storage than that! But eventually we did, so people made larger floppy disks, and made high density forms, (the most storage they got to was around 1.44 megabytes) until the floppy disk (like the other two storage devices in this triangle), was killed off by the superior CD-ROM and such.
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Optical Disk
Make way inferior peasants, the optical disk master race is coming through. Optical disks were around while the other storage mediums were in their prime, but they were too expensive when they were first made. The price eventually dropped though, and this paired with the fact that disks can store more data on them, and you can see why they killed off (made people not use) the other game storage mediums.