I am trying to find any resources about this item. I know that Argonaut made a Ramboy and Rambaby, both regular sized famicom cartridges used to aid in the development of games. I am presuming that this had a similar function. The Argonaut cart had a ribbon connector leading from the cartridge that connected to a pci card. This ram casette has some headers that I presume was for programming the eeproms, maybe utilizing it like a quick-flash cartridge with some extra RAM for debugging? Wanted to get some thoughts for anyone who worked with original hardware in those days, or might have some knowledge on this subject. https://imgur.com/a/qm6TJvm Other variations of this style cartridge I've seen is the the campus challenge 92 and 94 cartridge, as well as the service center top loader control deck tester seen here - http://www.limbofunk.com/deck-testers.html This mold has special cutouts for the various LED's on the deck tester, which is different from the Ram Casette, which has the mold that I've seen on the powerfest 94 cartridge that a friend owns, seen here - https://imgur.com/a/P6HzR7b
Since it says "RAM" I'd suspect it uses RAM instead of EPROMs. Probably an EPROM emulator with maybe a few additional SNES specific bits. A quick look at the PCB would tell you exactly what it is.
There are images of the PCB if you feel so inclined. I am not a EE so a quick look at the PCB tells me very little. thanks
Thanks. If you need more details/closer pics than this, please let me know. https://imgur.com/a/DqZigvZ Im curious what the battery is for if this is solely a RAM based cartridge. Seems like there would be a heavy drain to keep all the data in memory when its unplugged?
Yup, that's RAM. The battery powers it. SRAM doesn't use a lot. That's why it was used for saves. I have some of those 20+ years old. I also have "3rd party dev devices" (wharez players) with battery backed SRAM where the data has lasted for years. What you've got is basically a floppyless official game doctor that cost x times more back in the day. Looks nice. Any info on what the dip switches do?
