PC gamer turns Steam games into cartridges with ingenious 2.5-inch SSD system — games are stored on 128GB drives alongside a script to auto-start the title once

PC gamer turns Steam games into cartridges with ingenious 2.5-inch SSD system — games are stored on 128GB drives alongside a script to auto-start the title once

Hopefully, fuller implementation guides, scripts, and resources to help others purchase or 3D print their own Steam Game Cartridge shells will be shared in due course.

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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

usertests We could do this with SD cards, ideally the full-size ones which are becoming less common now. I've got an OEM PC with a blocked off slot where an SD card would go. These SATA ones are cute, easy to slap a big label on, and may have better longevity than SD cards. After 2.5" SATA drive supply dries up, you could continue it by using SATA shells with an M.2 drive inside. That's two components and likely more expensive than used 2.5" drives though. Reply

TerryLaze Sure if you get a bunch of ssds for $8 each you can do that, not so much if you have to pay normal price. Since they are using steamos anyway they could just put the whole os on the ssd as well, it's like 10-15gb, set up any special things the game might need and so on, custom wallpaper, os theme what have you. That's what I did to incorporate win9x games into my emulator frontend, just have the os with the drivers and the game installed in one image and just boot the image with an autoexec starting the game. Reply

usertests TerryLaze said: That's what I did to incorporate win9x games into my emulator frontend, just have the os with the drivers and the game installed in one image and just boot the image with an autoexec starting the game. That's what play-in-browser abandonware sites use. For example, for at least one game I tested, classicreload.com is downloading the CD-sized game into your memory each time you load the page, and running Windows 3.11 in DosBox. Then you click on the executable and go instead of autoexec. Reply

oliversmith2 First of all, you could also do this with USB sticks (type 3) but what your all missing is he's broken copyright law, your not allowed to copy or reproduce or repackage or redistribute games. If he was to sell a single one of those, he'll be looking at prison time. It's like buying a CD, copying it to your laptop so you have the MP3 versions then returning it to the shop. It's illegal. Reply

usertests oliversmith2 said: First of all, you could also do this with USB sticks (type 3) but what your all missing is he's broken copyright law, your not allowed to copy or reproduce or repackage or redistribute games. If he was to sell a single one of those, he'll be looking at prison time. It's like buying a CD, copying it to your laptop so you have the MP3 versions then returning it to the shop. It's illegal. You aren't going to get in trouble for installing your purchased Steam games, that will still use the Steam client and DRM checks as seen in the video, across a bunch of different SSDs. If he installs cracked Steam games on the "cartridges" and sells them, sure. This isn't legally different than having a bunch of games installed on a secondary 4-8 TB game drive. It's just subdivided into cute, hot swappable 128 GB bricks. Reply

TerryLaze oliversmith2 said: First of all, you could also do this with USB sticks (type 3) but what your all missing is he's broken copyright law, your not allowed to copy or reproduce or repackage or redistribute games. If he was to sell a single one of those, he'll be looking at prison time. It's like buying a CD, copying it to your laptop so you have the MP3 versions then returning it to the shop. It's illegal. These are steam games they only work for their own steam account, he can sell them and they would just be backups, if the person has that game on their steam account they could play it if they don't they wouldn't. Reply

derekullo oliversmith2 said: First of all, you could also do this with USB sticks (type 3) but what your all missing is he's broken copyright law, your not allowed to copy or reproduce or repackage or redistribute games. If he was to sell a single one of those, he'll be looking at prison time. It's like buying a CD, copying it to your laptop so you have the MP3 versions then returning it to the shop. It's illegal. Why buy CDs at all? Artists upload all their music for free to YouTube and other platforms. Simply google YouTube downloader and you can even convert the video directly to mp3. How do you steal what is already free lol 😛 Reply

derekullo I'd be more tempted to put all those SSDs into a XigmaNAS with a 10 gigabit NIC! Reply

TerryLaze derekullo said: How do you steal what is already free lol 😛 They aren't free, they are under license. Your access to youtube is free but the videos on there are not free videos, they are only free to watch, and only to watch on youtube. https://www.termsfeed.com/blog/youtube-license-types/ Reply

Washell Unpowered ssds lose data, especially the older models. It's a nice idea but he's going to be doing a lot of file verification Reply

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