Data-Con

Frampton Comes Alive?! What the hell?

A Data-Con (also spelled data-con) is a data storage medium. It is a flat disc-like device, used to contain valuable data (though your mileage on how 'valuable' the data might be varies), and can be encoded with encryptions only professional criminals have any hope of decoding.

Upon activation, Data-Cons emit a series of bright holographic images while relaying their data to the one who activated them.

Data-Cons are used not only to contain data, but can also store life-sustaining energon. During the search for the Mini-Cons on Earth, the discovery of a Data-Con's energon supplies helped the Autobots pull through some tough missions.

Fiction

Classics

In the wake of the Transformers' exodus from Cybertron Exodus! and the Mini-Cons' creation and reconstruction of the planet, the Dirt Digger Team used a Data-Con in an attempt to disrupt and alter a beacon signal meant to call the scattered Autobots back home. The New World

Theft of the Golden Disk

Wait, this just has a PSA on it!...Well, I suppose knowing is half the battle.

Cryotek warned Megatron not to access the information archive they are stealing, because only he could decode the Data-Con. These Data-Cons appeared to consist of two components: a thin, circuitry-like 'key' that could be stored along with others in an archive, and the disc that it is interted into.Theft of the Golden Disk

Force of Habit

While exploring a long-dead Cybertronian colony world, Checkpoint found a data-con with information about the planet, named Combatron, that detailed its history and what led to the extinction of the colonist population. Force of Habit

Ask Vector Prime

The Courier Mini-Con Team transported data-cons too sensitive for regular channels between Earth and Velocitron. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/07/20

Games

Transformers

When the Autobots ventured across Earth in search of the Mini-Cons, they stumbled upon the various Data-Cons that presumably were scattered alongside them upon the crash of their ship. Mainly because their beacon was identical to that of a Mini-Con storage panel. The Data-Cons supplied them with records of primitive human art, comics, music, and even development shots of miniature figures made in their honor. Hopefully this made up for getting shot trying to climb a cliff expecting a new Mini-Con. Notably, the Decepticons never showed any interest in them (though one can't imagine they'd get much out of their contents). Transformers

Notes

• Data-Cons first appeared in the Sony PlayStation 2 game, Transformers. The data they contain is "bonus" content for the player's amusement, like renders, development art, comics, toy pictures, music, and even some (at the time) never-before-released Generation 1 cartoon public service announcements in the same vein as ones from the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon.

Foreign names

• French: Datacan