Bootleg genesis Phantasy Star II cart: any way I can fix the save function?

Hiya!

a bootleg genesis Phantasy Star II cartridge came to my possession recently :


(sorry for the camera flash , can take a better pic if needed)

although it seems that it has all needed parts to actually save in the game, the save-flash is filled with garbage and the game cannot erase them. Tried removing the battery , the same garbage data remain. Something is broken and the save-flash access is not working (I assume)
I remember I have read somewhere in the past how to fix this, but unfortunately I cannot find the article/post/blog/??? again, anyone here has any hints?
thanks! ;-)

 

Leave the battery out for a long time. I changed a battery in a Link to the Past cart recently and was surprised that, even though I didn't exactly rush the process, the save survived. Possibly the same deal with your corrupted data.

 

I will try it but I don't think it will help... corrupted or not the game should be able to delete them (I think) , right now nothing happens when you delete the saves and loading them just crashes the game

 

I agree with Alchy, I had a fan made Final Fantasy II cart translated to english that I got from a friend for cheap for the same issues you are having. I ended up taking the battery out and left it out for two days, when I put a battery back in, there were no save games on it and I was able to to save data to the cartridge with no issues.

-Disjaukfia

 

thanks for the advice, I already removed the battery and wait :thumbsup: , will report back with the results!

 

I have removed the battery for 22 days now, but still the saves exist on the cart and the delete function does not work...
it seems this is a hardware flaw or most likely the save system is bogus...

 

Maybe the SRAM is damaged or a pin/trace to it is damaged.

 

Diode in backwards? Bad resistor? Could try swapping out the sram chip for another that is known to be empty.