Questions about the Backup Ram Cart (aka Power Memory)

[Promesyn]

Just 2 questions, but the 2nd is a handful:

1) are all the official memory ram carts (JP/PAL/NA) region-free?
Never used the PAL one, so I wanted to check... but I've always been under the impression that all SS ram carts are region-free.

2) what are the differences between the 3 Japanese ram carts in terms of build/architecture?
As far as I can tell, PAL & NA each had one release, but in Japan there are 3 different model #s: HSS-0111, HSS-0138, and HSS-0153 (1994, 1996, and 1996 respectively). They only slightly vary in color, but what I'm concerned about are things like PCB thickness, screws used, stickers/labels present, and so on.

Might be a shot into space, but I'd be very grateful for any help here.

[davyk]

I'm pretty sure the official backup memory cartridges are region free. I've used mine (bought in the PAL region) on my PAL and JP machines without any issues. Even using mixed region game saves on the one cart is fine.


Someone like zyrobs will probably know about any architectural differences. My guess is that they are minor hardware revisions.

[zyrobs]

The backup memory and RAM cards are all have no header code on them, they cannot be limited to any region.

The two ROM cards (Ultraman, KOF95) have region identifiers on the cart but they are set to multiregion so they should boot in all consoles. So they could be region locked, but they aren't.
Action Replays are the same.

Some third party backup cards have onboard compression software to appear as 80000 blocks despite using smaller flash chips. These are cards that have bootable firmware on them, similar to the ARs. I haven't dumped any of these but I'd guess they also use multiregion header to work in all consoles.

For the different backup memory cards, the difference is just the plastic.
They do have a bunch of different boards for backup cards, but as far as I know they just use whatever parts they have at hand.

The ones I've have pictures of:
171-6879C-01
IC1 - AT29C040 or AT29C040A (no difference in board layout or discrete components between the two)
IC2 - 7400
IC3 - 74244
found in a grey cart and a US cart

171-6879D
IC1 - AT29C040A
IC2 - 7400
IC3 - 74244
found in a green cart

171-7148A-01
IC1 - 315-5951A
IC2 to IC5 - AT29C010A
This one uses four 128k chips instead of one 512k. I don't know what card they were found in.

171-7627A
IC1 - AT29C040A
IC2 - 7400
IC3 - 74244
IC4 - 7400
found in a white cart

I also recall someone posting a pic of a cart that used battery backed SRAM memory inside, but I didn't have the picture saved, so I can't be sure about it. They were mentioned in this thread but the pictures are long gone:
segasaturngroup.proboards.com/thread/1852/saturn-memory-carts-flash-battery

It would be interesting to see more cards disassembled, but they use special screws so we can't just ask people to post pics. And I don't have the money to just buy a dozen of them just for testing.

[Promesyn]

Thank you very much davyk & zyrobs! Especially for taking the time to be so thorough; I really appreciate it.

So I take it there's no noticeable difference in the size or thickness of the PCBs used in the different ram carts - or at least not the ones you've seen zyrobs? (Again, only concerned about the official ram carts)

For example, none of them have PCBs that'd match the ones found in a 3rd-party variant such as the InterAct one shown here?



(the primary concern being certain PCBs having more of a risk-factor to the long-term health of the SS cart slot, and/or a higher likelihood of corrupting save files)

[Team Andromeda]

Here are the Memory cards I still have




The Pal and Japanese official ones are exactly the same size and are all region and work on any Saturn, much the same for the 3rd Party Japanese one I have. The Datal 8-Meg one, on the other hand, isn't the same size and unlike the Offical one isn't recognised in games (much like with the 4 Meg Action replay) and you can only save to the card, via the Saturn memory screen

[davyk]

I have two PAL ones (the one on the left in the above picture).

I also have an AR cartridge (the original one with the serial port on it) but I only use that to play the few unoptimised PAL games I have at 60Hz on my JP machines. I also have an official Capcom 4MB cart for their versus fighting games.

The only cartridge I have heard of that has a thick PCB is the ST-Key cartridge which just disables the region lock. I used to have one of those but I got rid of it once I got the AR. I doubt any official carts have a PCB  that would cause any trouble with the cart slot. That slot can be finicky though.

[zyrobs]

Third party cards can have different PCBs and different contents, some have bootable code (compression for higher block count, region unlock, cheat engine, RAM expansion, any combination of them).

The official carts all have the same board thickness, ram carts, rom carts, backup cards, everything, probably even the developer cards. It's an industry standard thickness. But some third party cards did not adhere to it as strictly due to being shoddy Chinese workmanship.

Either way the problem isn't the third party cards being thicker (the difference is negligible), the problem is that they did not have the connector edges sanded down. The PCB pins had sharp square endings, and this makes the PCB push the copper pins in the connector downwards, bending and dislocating/breaking them. Official cards have the PCB edge sanded into a triangular shape, so they wedge in and push the pins sideways, applying less or no downwards force.

That's why third party cards can be dangerous, not because they are thicker.

Also the cart pins are very thin so even minimal dirt is enough to cause contact errors. You need to clean the cartridge edges every once in a while. This is true for all of them.

[Team Andromeda]

Jan 24, 2021 17:57:56 GMT zyrobs said:

Third party cards can have different PCBs and different contents, some have bootable code (compression for higher block count, region unlock, cheat engine, RAM expansion, any combination of them).

The official carts all have the same board thickness, ram carts, rom carts, backup cards, everything, probably even the developer cards. It's an industry standard thickness. But some third party cards did not adhere to it as strictly due to being shoddy Chinese workmanship.

Either way the problem isn't the third party cards being thicker (the difference is negligible), the problem is that they did not have the connector edges sanded down. The PCB pins had sharp square endings, and this makes the PCB push the copper pins in the connector downwards, bending and dislocating/breaking them. Official cards have the PCB edge sanded into a triangular shape, so they wedge in and push the pins sideways, applying less or no downwards force.

That's why third party cards can be dangerous, not because they are thicker.

Also the cart pins are very thin so even minimal dirt is enough to cause contact errors. You need to clean the cartridge edges every once in a while. This is true for all of them.

Not quite the case for Datel, well at least in the UK .Datel manufactured their cards In-House at their UK warehouse, but their quality was never has good and the Cart side was that little bigger , this was much the same case for their CDX line of Mega CD carts