Tendo City

Whoever came up with the idea should be ... dealt with...

I mean, it's one thing on a PC, which is an open system -- battery dies, or HDD goes bad? Just open up the box and fix it. But consoles are designed to die, well before their purchasers are probably going to never want them again. I started thinking about this a few days ago... extention of some other things partially, but also thinking 'that's not nice'... I mean, isn't it not nice to make you buy something which seems like it's going to last, and which could last a really long time (carts don't break quickly...), but which actually is going to either be a useless piece of plastic in 5-15 years... the only option then is a very tricky battery replacement. But then that battery will just die, losing all your saves again, down the road...

Now, it is true that no electronics last forever. They eventually fail. But the battery dies long, long before the cart... no-battery carts will last a long time in fully usable condition.

Oh, some carts do have other save methods. The main ones (the ones Nintendo has used anyway) are EEPROM and Flash RAM. That is, chips that get written to each time you save. They eventually break down (10,000 writes, or 100,000, or perhaps more, is what I've heard), but that only happens during writes... from what I can tell, if you stop writing it over (that is, put the game away and stop playing it once you're done with it) it stops degrading. Also, when the thing fails it probably won't erase your save. It'll become impossible to continue to save to the cart (and perhaps something will mess up), but it shouldn't actually erase your data like a dead battery will...

Anyway... obviously, the NES, SNES, GB, GBC, and VB (the few that had a save feature) all have battery save only for their games. DS has flashcarts. GC? Not sure if there's a battery in there (for the clock)... but if it died all that should happen is a failure of the internal clock, not bothering most games. N64 and GBA though... those are trickier. Took me a while to find all this data (thank you emulation-websites, for wanting to know this data so you can properly emulate the games (because different save methods must be emulated differently)!)

N64 and GBA each have the following types of saving: None (or password), S-RAM (battery backed RAM save -32KB?), EEPROM (in two sizes, a small one (4KB) and a larger one (16KB n64, 64KB GBA?)), and Flash RAM (128KB n64, something larger than that on GBA), and, for the N64, controller paks (more later, but they are 256kb.). On the N64, the most popular save method is Controller Pak. Second is EEPROM. Flash ROM and S-RAM (that evil stuff) have smaller gamelists... On GBA, EEPROM is most common, with no controller paks for the third parties to all rely on.

(an aside here... there is a lot of mis-information out there about N64 and GBA saving... many people belive that they all use EEPROMS. That is not true. If they did, then the emulation people would not have gone to all this trouble.)

Anyway, by this point (looking at this over the past two days), what I really wanted to know was, which N64 and GBA games will eventually become bricks like NES, SNES, and GB games already are becoming (and GBC games eventually will)?


N64 List seperated by category (games that don't save at all omitted (a few fighting games mostly)0
http://n64.icequake.net/mirror/www.elite...aq.html#s5

N64 Alphabetical list. Doesn't include some of the newer titles (Conker, Paper Mario, etc) - they are on the list linked above.
http://n64.icequake.net/mirror/www.elite..._list.html

GBA - by release number or search only, unfortunately. Only one I could find... with the N64 list there's a nice compiled list of games by save type there, but on GBA...
http://offlinelistgba.free.fr/index.php

According to these sites:

N64:

Quote: 1080º Snowboarding
F-Zero X
Harvest Moon 64
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The
Major League Baseball featuring Ken Griffey Jr.
Mario Golf
New Tetris, The
Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber
Resident Evil 2
Super Smash Bros.
WCW/NWO Revenge
WWF: Wrestlemania 2000

GBA: From searching through the games I have, and some I've considered getting, this is what I found... quite a few of the good GBA games use batteries.

Fire Emblem and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Castlevania Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow (but not NES Classics Castlevania), Kirby: The Amazing Mirror, the other Kirby game whose name I forget (the NES remake...), Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Riviera, Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Konami Krazy Racers, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, F-Zero: GP Legend... and more I'm sure...

Now, most aren't; most third parties want to minimize costs, so the most common GBA save type is the 4kb eeprom. This or the larger eeprom or flashram are used in lots of games... (some I looked up include all the NES Classics games, all four Mario Advance titles, F-Zero: Climax (the third GBA F-Zero game, Japan only), Mario Kart Super Circuit, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Tactics Ogre, Guilty Gear, King of Fighters, Street Fighter, Sword of Mana, Advance Wars 1 and 2... etc...

Of course, the list could be wrong (more likely for GBA I'd say, given the nature of the sites I found the lists on, but could be wrong for either)... the sites aren't perfect -- for instance the GBA site there has a GBC list, but just says all the games have SRAM -- even games that don't have oncart saving (Project S-11, Micro Machines 1&2 Twin Turbo, Micro Machines V3), but it looks mostly believable... the weirdest thing, though, was Lunar Legend. It listed the Japanese version as being SRAM but the US one as EEPROM... all other games had the same save method in all regions. My guesses are either 1) it's wrong or 2) Ubisoft wanted to save money and cut back on the save size to do so (when porting the game).


Oh yes, one final thing. N64 controller paks, I've read, are mostly battery backed. Third party ones probably all are. (edit: Found a site that says this...
http://forums.mogusland.com/archive/inde...t-680.html ... plenty of misinformation there, but the comment that the person opened a memory card and saw a battery in it looks true. There was another site I'd found too, that said some later first-party cards are flash rom and not battery-backed... not sure about the truth of this though.)

The only hope there? Well... that it's easier (and more legal) to back up controller paks, I guess. While some consoles are hard to back up and require hard to get quasi-illegal hardware (and, for older consoles, hard to get and not as supported on modern systems... on this respect GBA is 'easiest', but it still seems to require stuff that's usually used by people uploading roms from the internet to flashcarts to play on their gbas.), N64 controller paks are easy to back up to computers with a dexdrive. Also, the N64 Gameshark (Pro) lets you move orback up save files anywhere, including from a cart to a memory card...

The GBA/DS Gameshark lets you back up DS saves (to PC), but not GBA it seems...

None [or very few] of my NES/SNES games have gone bad yet, so I don't think this is really a big issue.

It's just frusterating when you think about it, and compare it to the life of the cart or to no-sram games... or to open platforms like the PC where you can do something about problems like this... but slowly dying batteries soldered onto the circuitboards? Can't do much really.

What were they to do? EEPROM really was not an option back then. They only switched around the time of the PS1 when Sony (and everyone else soon after) realized very quickly that a memory card really needs to last a long time. Now, that said, GB and GBC games still used batteries.

But hey, they moved on with the GBA. The tech is "up to date" now.

As for the internal clocks... I really have no idea how that works. If they just make internal batteries of the rechargeble sort, then wall power will keep that thing charged for a long long time.

Oh and, yes it is VERY frustrating to know my older gen games will eventually lose all their data if I don't take some sort of action. That is why I have every intention of finding a "hot swap" method of swapping the batteries so I can keep the data for another 5+ years.

Quote:What were they to do? EEPROM really was not an option back then. They only switched around the time of the PS1 when Sony (and everyone else soon after) realized very quickly that a memory card really needs to last a long time. Now, that said, GB and GBC games still used batteries.

But they just don't seem to have considered lastability... I mean in NES/SNES days flash was more expensive so you can understand it, but on N64/GBA... the only consideration seems to be 'which size save space is best for the game / how small can we make the save file so which save format should we use', not 'sram should be a last resort because of batteries'... N64 controller paks using batteries (third-party ones are confirmed to... first-party? I've been looking, but just can't find any more information... it's frusterating... what do I do, buy a new n64 memcard from nintendo.com, a gamebit screwdriver, and open it up and see what's inside? Expensive way of doing it... there must be something somewhere on the internet!) is pretty annoying too, but as I said, at least for that there's gameshark/dexdrive...

As for a method of replacing batteries that doesn't wipe your savefiles... good luck, but I bet the only way to do it would somehow get your hands on a "backup" hardware thing... same for GBA. (GB/GBC doesn't seem to be supported by most GBA backup flash things (that are 99% used for playing roms)... there is obviously something, but the farther back you go the harder it is to find the hardware... not to mention how Nintendo would really rather that people didn't get this stuff. Even if backing up your own stuff is legal.)

And of course, there's the problem that you don't know the battery is dying until it dies... and once it does it's too late.

GBA games don't use batteries. It's solid state based.

Same with N64 memory cards. Yes, I opened up both to check out the innards to confirm it myself.

Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.

Uh, DJ, as I said, SOME GBA games -- the ones I listed and others (that I didn't think of looking up on that page) are indeed battery-backed. As I said, the GBA and N64 have three different oncart save methods they can use: two solid-state and one battery-backed. That page says all of the ones that I listed as as battery-backed are; the only one I have absolute confirmation of is F-Zero Maximum Velocity, since once in the IGN GB mailbox they showed pictures of the insides of three carts, one that used flash memory, one that used EEPROM, and one (F-Zero) that used a battery, though, and that makes me think very strongly that the rest of that list is true as well.

As for N64 memory cards, what I've heard is what I said: first-party cards may well be flash memory; some are, from what I've heard (ones made after some point in 1999 or something? Not sure if that's true.). But third-party ones... I don't have pictures, since the site is partially dead (and very frusteratingly the entry for the first-party card seems gone forever (and yes I tried yahoo/google cache and archive.org), but there are images from two third-party cards on this mirror of the site (on the real site, a lot of the images are dead... even the mirror doesn't have the first-party-N64-memcard page available, though. :()... go here.

'Cartridge Scans'. There are also images of some of the N64 games that use batteries, proving me correct. There isn't just one N64 and GBA save method, unlike popular opinion.

Anyway... in the Interact and Preformance cards here they do have scanned, the battery is on the back of the card. Again, I don't know about Nintendo's, because I can't find any scans or details of what people who opened them found or tech specs for the controller pak or anything (though if Nintendo made some with batteries and some without, I'm not sure if just one set of scans would prove anything... but it'd help. Especially if it was one without a battery.)...
http://n64.icequake.net/mirror/tcsr2001.tripod.com/

That's what happens when you buy 3rd party... Or when you bought 3rd party back then anyway. I speak only of the 1st party stuff.

But as far as the same cart, or even the same game, having 3 different techs for saving.... never heard of that until now. I personally think that may be showing the steady evolution of carts on the N64, with the battery backed being the oldest and the other two being the newer ones that replaced it.

I also was not aware of this on the GBA. Pretty odd to say the least... I mean, I opened up one of the very first games made for it, that I bought on launch day even, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and it didn't have a battery to be seen. I'm surprised there's room in there honestly.

At any rate, them's the breaks.

Quote:I also was not aware of this on the GBA. Pretty odd to say the least... I mean, I opened up one of the very first games made for it, that I bought on launch day even, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and it didn't have a battery to be seen. I'm surprised there's room in there honestly.

Yeah... I've tried to find the picture of F-Zero, but can't... I know I saw it though.

Quote:But as far as the same cart, or even the same game, having 3 different techs for saving.... never heard of that until now. I personally think that may be showing the steady evolution of carts on the N64, with the battery backed being the oldest and the other two being the newer ones that replaced it.

No, small EEPROM was first. S-RAM came later, when developers wanted to be able to save more data... and S-RAM (on both GBA and N64) is larger than the basic EEPROM. I believe that the large EEPROM and flash memory savetypes came after s-ram, but I'd have to compare release dates of the games each type uses to be sure... but anyway, as I said, and as the fact that Nintendo published some of those battery-backed N64 games (Ocarina of Time, 1080, F-Zero, etc)... at least half, actually (of the twelve)...
Oh, and it's not the same game having three different save types... as I said, there is one maybe, but it's more likely a mistake... all the others I saw listed use the same save mechanism in all regions. There are just a bunch of different types.

It makes sense when you think about it... just like with the ROM size, save type is a decision where money matters (as well as what the game needs), so they're going to have multiple choices.

Quote:That's what happens when you buy 3rd party... Or when you bought 3rd party back then anyway. I speak only of the 1st party stuff.

I think the best way to be reasonably sure that you've got flash memory cards is to get them from Nintendo.com... as I said, I'm not completely convinced that even the early first-party cards were all flash. But yes, even ignoring the battery thing, first party cards are much more reliable.

One thing I can say for sure is this. The Sega CD's memory cart DOES use a battery. That's more annoying than a cart because that's a lot more lost saved games...

Oh yeah, I still have a lot of saved games to "catch up" on on my PS2. I did manage to accomplish a number of difficult goals in Katamari Damacy, and my current save file is better than the first.

I also thought I'd mention that I got to try out the updated GBA SP in a store. Turns out their old GBA broke or something so they had the sky blue one in there. Those screenshots don't really do it justice, namely because you look at them and you say "wait a sec, my SP isn't that dim". I think it looked like that due to the lighting adjustment, but anyway that updated screen is nice. I don't notice any blurring problem or anything, but I will say that if ABF decides to buy one of these new models, him holding out this long may end up making the rest of us look like fools. The thing is just a very nice screen. Turning down the brightness is the only option there is though, you can't actually turn off the light completely. As for battery life, I think I'll need to look that up somewhere. I would suspect it to be roughly the same knowing Nintendo though. I believe the clarity doesn't come from extra energy output so much as directing all that light into our EYES rather than directly UP (try using your old SP as a flashlight and you may notice the brightest beam comes directly from the top facing up from the system, as opposed to directly forward from the screen out, I believe that a lot of energy is lost due to that which the new design manages to harness).

Quote:One thing I can say for sure is this. The Sega CD's memory cart DOES use a battery. That's more annoying than a cart because that's a lot more lost saved games...

N64 memcards dying isn't so bad because so many of the best games don't use memcard save (and not all memcards have batteries anyway)... but yeah, systems where you have to save on memcards that have batteries in them... not good. (What about Playstation (1, I'm sure PS2 is flash memory...)?)

The new SP: I already have a GBA... I just don't see the point in buying another one.

Well, the main reason is the backlighting really. But, you really don't seem all that interested in that feature. I'm just saying if you DID suddenly want backlighting, your holding back until now would have had been paying off.

The PS1 memory cards don't use batteries. I believe they were the first to go that route. In fact, I just opened up a PS1 memory card to confirm it, and there's not a battery to be seen. All firmware. These should last as long as the chip itself lasts, and disintegration in a cool dry place tends to take a long time. It should last longer than my body will hold out, and really that's all I need. I can't vouch for the unofficial cards. The Pocket Station (yes, I actually have one of those relics) uses a battery, but not for saved data. It's for the internal clock and running the on-the-go 16x16 resolution games some PS1 games could save onto them. The actual saved data, aside from the clock, is stored in solid state.

As for N64 memory cards, I actually had always just assumed they used flash because it just seemed a logical conclusion at the time. I decided to check to make sure, and lo and behold, my official N64 memory card DOES in fact use a battery, same as anything else... Yes, as you said with the N64 most of the good games used the cart, but Mystical Ninja uses this card :D.

I wonder if the tech was ever upgraded? This is a rather old card. I am not willing to actually spend money at the Nintendo store on a new, more permanent solution until I know whether or not the tech changed.

Oh and, the Sega Saturn actually had internal saved space, just like the Sega CD. Also just like the Sega CD, it uses a watch battery. Unlike ANY other system I have seen before or since, there is a removable compartment right on the back of the system that gives you direct access to easily replace this battery. I recently bought a used Saturn you see, and replacing the battery was the first thing I had to do. I do not have one of those game cartridge sized memory cards the Saturn uses, so I can't tell you if that one used solid state or not. What I can say is the Dreamcast memory units are solid state, and just like the Pocket Station, the VMUs use a battery but only for the internal clock and the on the go mini-games. The Dreamcast itself has no internal memory except for the internal clock, which appears to run on a battery, which I might add died a long time ago, but I actually would have to take apart the Dreamcast to confirm this and replace the battery if that is the case, and honestly, the internal clock just isn't important enough for me to spend the time. If I ever did go about it, I would be mainly motivated by the need to "explore" the system's innards. It's why I eventually take apart everything I own, excepting things like capacitors where personal safety tends to be paramount.

Unfortunatly, my tri-wing screw driver I got some time ago for the OTHER kind of special security screw Nintendo uses has been damaged from overuse... In other words, I can't open my Gamecube memory cards. However, I do believe Nintendo themselves stated the memory was solid state and didn't use batteries. One of my PS2 memory cards is transparent. I didn't have to open it at all. No, PS2 cards are solid state, no battery. The XBox memory cards are screwed a little too tightly. Until I get a small screwdriver with a better grip, I don't want to risk damaging either the driver I already have or the screws.

So there's what I was able to pick up just now.

Quote:As for N64 memory cards, I actually had always just assumed they used flash because it just seemed a logical conclusion at the time. I decided to check to make sure, and lo and behold, my official N64 memory card DOES in fact use a battery, same as anything else... Yes, as you said with the N64 most of the good games used the cart, but Mystical Ninja uses this card .

I wonder if the tech was ever upgraded? This is a rather old card. I am not willing to actually spend money at the Nintendo store on a new, more permanent solution until I know whether or not the tech changed.

As I said, I read somewhere that someone said that they changed the tech at some point later on, but I can't find any confirmation on it... it wasn't exactly the greatest source, so I don't believe it based just on that. For instance, Wikipedia... it says "N64 memcards (first party) use flash memory!" which of course we now know to not be true, at least for the older ones... I've looked around on yahoo and google for anything that would tell me something concrete behind the technology behind the memory card, but I just can't find anything. The N64 itsself? Yeah, plenty. But the memory card? And specifically, if at any point Nintendo changed the tech so that they don't use batteries anymore? Nope... I'd really like to find that information, but just can't (find anything that looks even vaguely trustworthy).

As for my cards... I've got stuff on them... Gauntlet (like eight-plus save files, maybe two or three of which are mine), Hydro Thunder, Rush 2, Rush 2049, Mystical Ninja, Goemon's Great Adventure, Beetle Adventure Racing, Wipeout 64... what else... an Excitebike track or two, Bust-A-Move 99 (64 blocks... way larger than anything else (second is Rush 2, which is 29 blocks...) And I'd be annoyed if some of those were erased, but it's not like it's EVERYTHING. Just nine games of fourty... Still, compared to most other cart-based system, that's not bad. And with memcard games, it's not like a game with an onboard battery -- just start over on a new card. A pain for some games ( I don't think I'd play BAR over anytime soon...), but Goemon? Eh, I only played MN64 once... and GGA just three times... I wouldn't mind playing them again. :)

Of course, for that small-but-irritatingly-good list of N64 games with batteries on them, there's less you can do... short of having a backup unit or a gameshark pro... and even then, you'd either need to play the rom or open up the cart and deal with soldering. Ick.

... Even so, though, it does make me want a dexdrive/gameshark pro, sooner rather than later. :)

Quote:The PS1 memory cards don't use batteries. I believe they were the first to go that route. In fact, I just opened up a PS1 memory card to confirm it, and there's not a battery to be seen. All firmware. These should last as long as the chip itself lasts, and disintegration in a cool dry place tends to take a long time. It should last longer than my body will hold out, and really that's all I need. I can't vouch for the unofficial cards. The Pocket Station (yes, I actually have one of those relics) uses a battery, but not for saved data. It's for the internal clock and running the on-the-go 16x16 resolution games some PS1 games could save onto them. The actual saved data, aside from the clock, is stored in solid state.

I'd read "EEPROM" but didn't know whether to believe it given that it wasn't an overly technical site and sites get that stuff wrong all the time (like the site that says all N64 games that have internal save use EEPROM...). Good to hear though.

Quote:Unfortunatly, my tri-wing screw driver I got some time ago for the OTHER kind of special security screw Nintendo uses has been damaged from overuse... In other words, I can't open my Gamecube memory cards. However, I do believe Nintendo themselves stated the memory was solid state and didn't use batteries. One of my PS2 memory cards is transparent. I didn't have to open it at all. No, PS2 cards are solid state, no battery. The XBox memory cards are screwed a little too tightly. Until I get a small screwdriver with a better grip, I don't want to risk damaging either the driver I already have or the screws.

Yes, PS2 and GC memory is definitely solid-state... the companies have said so clearly.

Tri-wing screwdrivers... what is that used for other than opening GBA carts?

Quote:. I can't vouch for the unofficial cards.

A third-party memory card that actually lasts long enough for you to worry about the battery dying is probably rare indeed... :)

http://www.sega.com/support/supportsys.p..._dreamcast

Quote:Batteries
Dreamcast uses an internal rechargeable battery to store its settings. Dreamcast should be turned on for at least two hours to initially charge the battery. The rechargeable battery should then last for 20 days when Dreamcast isn't being used.

The rechargeable battery in Dreamcast isn't a user-serviceable part. To have the battery replaced, follow the directions for Repairs before sending or bringing Dreamcast to an authorized Sega repair center.

So there you have it. According to Sega, the battery that maintains the internal clock time on the dreamcast is some rechargeble affair. Now I understand why it loses it's internal clock. I don't exactly play the thing all that often.

...I do think I need to get that Sea Man game sometime though... Maybe Chu Chu Rocket, the rocket chews on you...

Dreamcasts have problems with bad lasers... my cousins had two, and both messed up...

The early Dreamcasts had issues. I got a later model, and it hasn't screwed up yet.

Hmm... my other GBC games (transparent cases make it easy to see inside... :)) all have batteries of course, but I don't see one in Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble... odd, I thought all GBC games with saving used batteries. So how does it save?