What is “ROM”?
ROM is a shortening from English “Read Only Memory”. Chips of constant memory are called this way. They are used in cartridges, arcade machines and other devices. These chips contain game code, graphics, and sounds. ROMs are the contains of such chips, extracted to files. These files are usually called “dumps”, as a person, who is making ROMs, dumps the data inside chips into a file. ROMs themselves are useless. The hardware of different types of computers and consoles (that are also computers, designed especially for games) differs a lot, that’s why it is not possible to run a program on one computer type, made for another one. To be able to do this people create special programs – emulators. ROMs may be used for other purposes – there are programs, that let extracting game resources (such as graphics, sounds, etc.) out of them and change these resources (for instance, when translating game into other languages). Also, there are so-called flash-cartridges, that let you running a game
Read-only Memory (ROM) Permanent memory built into a computer, Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC, or other device, which is retained even when the device is switched off. ROM can be accessed (“read”) quickly, but it generally cannot be modified (“written to”). Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs are provided with at least 32 MB of ROM, enabling them to boot up quickly.
