The other day I was about to check a memory card I had recently got and noticed that it was somewhat heavier than the one I already had. Both are official Sega memory cards. So I opened them up and here are the results: Both (Front) Both (Back) Close-up 1995 Memory Card Close-up 1997 Memory Card I have no clue about electronics but maybe someone can comment them.
Well the 1995 one has 4 x 1 Megabit (128K x 8) 5V Flash memory (1024 sectors with 128 bytes per sector) with a sega custom probably to make sure each chip gets the right data lines. The 1997 has a single 4 Megabit (512K x 8) 5V Flash memory (2048 sectors with 256 bytes per sector) with some basic gating logic chips. That seems to be it. I assume they changed it to save money (as 1 chip is going to be cheaper then 4 chips) and to bring production costs down.
Do you have the RAM cards to scan? I'm really amazed they made such a large ASIC to replace literally 16 logic gates (and a 2:4 decoder).
