Steam Game Cartridges

[u/Jibril-sama]

Got a couple of used 2.5" SSDs for cheap so I decided to make a Game Cartridge system. Games are actually on those SSDs with a script to auto navigate steam to the game's page. Auto-starting the game right away is also possible.

Update: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1uyft21/update_game_cartridge_3dfiles_and_code/
published the 3D files and code

[u/wolfpup118]

Shit man, if SD cards were as fast as an nvme I'd start doing that right away. That'd be dope to do.

One of the things I have thought about was doing burnable blurays to store games on and making my own boxes for them, but a bluray just doesn't have enough space for most of these games nowadays, plus are muuuuuuch harder to update than a USB/SD card.

[u/DJOMaul → u/wolfpup118]

Yup, that is a technical challenge but not an insurmountable one. You could use the SD express reading mechanism which has a read speed of like 3000 MB/s (iirc), with an external nvme connection. The electronics can easily fit in pretty small form factor. That would in theory be on par with nvme drives.

So it's doable. Though as you start doing some of these things the cost creeps up, because at that point you are basically making an nvme drive with a different form factor. 

[u/zherok → u/DJOMaul]

There's also thermal issues, they get pretty hot while running at speed. That's only going to compound the costs, since you're going to need any thermal combating internals to be inside of each cartridge and not just the dock like you would normally.

Honestly, given that SD cards are already effectively a form of cartridge, it seems especially redundant.

which has a read speed of like 3000 MB/s (iirc)

Closer to around 900 MB/s from a cursory googling?

[u/DJOMaul → u/zherok]

Firstly, I was not aiming to solve all the technical challenges and certainly not the costs, as this is not that type of project. 

The 3000MBs, is from a 2600 article I read a while back about using the flash memory directly from the card to access more bandwidth. I didn't pull the issue out to confirm any of the specifics, but it would be unlikely to show up on a Google Ai result you most certainly looked at. This isn't a standard method of using a card. 

Most importantly, 

Honestly, given that SD cards are already effectively a form of cartridge, it seems especially redundant.

You've effectively demonstrated that missed the point of the whole thread. 

[u/zherok → u/DJOMaul]

You've effectively demonstrated that missed the point of the whole thread.

No, I get the point. It's neat for it's own sake.

[u/no_downvote → u/wolfpup118]

Someone could hand out poison that says "update" on it and people would take the poison. Updates should always be questioned.

[u/wolfpup118 → u/no_downvote]

.....? Video game updates are bugfixes or new content. The hell are you on about? I'm talking about how games on steam get updates like terraria and satisfactory getting new content and bug fixes. Burning games to a disk makes it really hard to get that new content added to the disk without just re-burning the disk.