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bond697

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cartridge save battery question
« on: October 24, 2008, 10:39:21 PM »
it was a couple weeks ago on gfaqs i was reading somewhere about, starting with the later games for the n64, something about the memory used for game saves was changed so that a  bettery wasn't required?  now i can't find the thread anymore, but i randomly thought of that today.  is that truye, or is someone at gfaqs unsurprisingly talking out their ass? their explanation didn't make sense. i tried looking it up, but i may have been looking up the wrong search terms, i couldn't find anything.

it doesn't make sense to me that the newest n64 games/all gba games don't need power to maintain a save, but maybe i'm missing something. 

anyone?

:edit:
a very happy united nations day to all! :tongue:
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Lenophis

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Re: cartridge save battery question
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2008, 10:48:02 PM »
I believe some GBA games (all?) use flashram to save their data. What other systems use is unknown to me.
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Odbarc

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Re: cartridge save battery question
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2008, 11:34:54 PM »
I hope whatever save system they're using, it better be better than the old SNES save batteries.

I think mine are starting to die. Losing saves. Weird memory glitches in non-saving games. (Like Super Mario Kart)
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Dragonsbrethren

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Re: cartridge save battery question
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2008, 11:38:30 PM »
Some GBA carts use EEPROMs for saving, some still use SRAM with a battery, others use FlashRAM, and newer ones use FeRAM instead of SRAM, which doesn't require a battery either. The type is decided by the amount of space needed, EEPROM holds up 4Kb-64Kb, SRAM/FeRAM is 256Kb, and FlashRAM is 512Kb-1024Kb.

 :edit:

The Pokémon games use FlashRAM with a battery used for their real-time clock. Some pictures of cart innards here.

As for N64, it sounds about the same:

Quote
The other significant problem to playing backed-up N64 games is the save chip. There are five different types of data saving in N64 games: EEPROM (512 bytes), 4X EEPROM (2Kbytes), SRAM (32Kbytes), FlashRAM (128Kbytes), and the Controller Pak (256Kbytes). The Controller Pak plugs into the N64 controller, and is the easiest to deal with. All of the other chips are built into individual game cartridges, and thus require specific support to be handled by a backup unit.

http://n64.icequake.net/

So it depends on your game.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2008, 12:27:52 AM by Dragonsbrethren »
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bond697

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Re: cartridge save battery question
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2008, 12:14:07 AM »
thanks for the replies! i just spent some time reading through that link, and it's pretty interesting.  i guess whoever made that post on gfaqs was pretty much dead on, based on what i remember of it.

interesting bit of trivia:

on that n64 page, in the backup units section, someone named "LaC" is mentioned a few times.  he's the person responsible(as far as i know) for the legend of zelda: oot debug rom being distributed.  it was originally brought up on the "zelda's secret ocarina" message board(a long time ago at this point) that he had it. he eventually distributed it to "cooliscool", and it leaked from there, from what i've read.

btw, what ever happened to that site(zelda's secret ocarina)? it was a really nice oot website, and had really great mesage boards for oot-related beta/glitch stuff...
one day it was just closed, with the a mesage that the account had been suspended.  i wonder why...
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Dragonsbrethren

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Re: cartridge save battery question
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2008, 12:25:53 AM »
Whoever ran it probably didn't pay their bill, that's usually what those messages mean.
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bond697

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Re: cartridge save battery question
« Reply #6 on: October 25, 2008, 12:47:35 AM »
i should've been clearer. i knew that the suspended acct probably meant a lack of payment.  i remember reading somewhere else, after searching for awhile, that it was allowed to run out for a reason.  that post(wherever it was, it was awhile ago) was never followed up with a reason, though.  i THINK i found that at a webpage/message board/guestbook thing that belonged to "cendamos", a very, very, very talented oot hacker, i'm pretty sure he's the one who discovered how to restore the beta rooms(120 and 121) in the oot debug rom.  those rooms, for anyone who hasn't seen them yet, are pretty damn cool, as they're featured in some VERY old beta loz: oot screenshots. 
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