That is how much my original SNK memory card cost me. The good news is, you can use alternative memory cards, anything 68pin and JEIDA v3 compatible with SRAM(!) can be used. JEIDA is the direct predecessor of PCMCIA. They where used e.g. in industrial printers for fonts and graphics etc. I got a good deal on a 2mb SRAM memory card, 1000 times the space of the official SNK memory card. A little overkill? Maybe, but works a treat!
It needs to be more than just SRAM, it needs *battery backed* SRAM. There's also a limit to how much RAM the BIOS can make use of, maybe 1Mbit.
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-Fujitsu-512-KB-512KB-SRAM-Flash-PCMCIA-Cards_W0QQitemZ380129956192QQcmdZViewItemQQptZBI_Control_Systems_PLCs?hash=item588182d160&_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116 Any guess whether one of these would be compatible? I'd guess it's JEIDA 4.1/PCMCIA 2.0... but I don't know whether these systems work backwards compatible (IE 4.1 including compatibility for 3, etc). Likewise, is there any recommended places to look for such a thing? I sure could go for some more kilobytes!
I don't quite understand how the memory card works, does it actually save the game state? or does it just save the highscore list?
It's up to the game what it saves, but typically it's high scores since the card is 2 kilobytes (divided into ? blocks). Yup.. Too bad they didn't choose FRAM.
In 1990 I don't think FRAM were an option Maybe in 1993 (Sonic3 time) but not in 1990 I think. And even in 1993 the FRAM chip was bulky enough to not fit on a PCMCIA-esque card (JEIDA)
