I know that many of my saves are probably good for a few more years, but I really want to be able to back these up. Although only if there is a way to get them back onto the cartridge, of course. This applies to the games that don't have Memory Card support. So, does anyone know if this is possible, with a stock US/NTSC GoldenEye cartridge? If so, what equipment would be necessary to perform such an operation? I've lurked around here for a little while, and figured you guys would be my best bet to finding an answer.
Nope. It (like most N64 games) saves to an 512 byte serial EEPROM. To backup the save, one might be able to use a serial EEPROM programmer (not sure about this, they might be made specifically for Nintendo which would mean protocol kept private.) Other than that people have written numerous utilities for backup units to backup saves but none are terribly reliable. Anyways, you don't have to worry loosing EEPROM saves, if you power up the game every few years you can expect the save to outlast you.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I wasn't aware of this. Can you give me more info about the utilities you were talking about though?
There is a utility made for Doctor V64 which can backup EEPROM saves to memcard (as DV64 saved to cart while running your backup games). Then you could transfer it to your pc (you can supposely backup any type of save from cartridge using DV64's connection to pc, but I haven't tryed it).
some action replay and gamebuster cheat modules can backup EEPROM saves to memory card. that would be the easiest and cheapest way, if you don't own a backup unit or an eeprom programmer.
Wasn't there some combination of buttons you could press on startup to get to the built in memory manager for the N64 memory card? I used to backup all of my cart saves to the memory card because friends were always "accidently" deleting my saves.
Don't the N64 memory cards run on the battery cells though? A few years back I left one in my pocket and it got laundered, and I heard a rattling in it and cracked it open and a battery fell out. I think this was a 3rd party Mad Catz though...
Third party memory cards have a battery inside. The first party ones use flash memory like the PSX memcards. Some games let you use that button combination. Perfect Dark does, but I'm not sure if that game lets u back up your profile onto a memcard. Don't some carts use SRAM or flashmemory to save the data?
All memory card/carts/packs or whatever use battery backed SRAM (original are 256 kilobits). Game cartridges contain either serial EEPROM, battery backed SRAM or FlashROM. There is no memory card manager or framework for one built into the N64, they're provided entirely by the games.
I might have been using a Game Shark, i don't really remember... I don't have a shark to test it with any more.
