RAM expansion?

I have a 4mb, Ive seen an 8mb I have heard of the fabled VF3 expansion that came 3d accelerator as well. I was wondering how big the ram expansions got, 16mb maybe? Is it possible to mod one to oh say 64mb vram? That would be the ultimate for emulation. IF anyone has a large ram set or has modded one tell me. My other question is there anyway to play bomberman saturn via my cable modem?
 
The 8Mb(thats mega bits) RAM carts you talk of (assuming saturn here...) are only for saving games, not memory expansion. I've never heard of a VF3 expansion - VF3 was only ever on Dreamcast anyway. If you are talking dreamcast, the only memory "expansion" you could get was in the form of VMU's - not usable for system memory expansion.

You can't upgrade the vram at all. Can't see how it'd help if you could.

I don't think you can use a cable modem with the Saturn - you wouldn't get any faster than the native modem allows anyway (28.8Kbps).
 
I was wondering how big the ram expansions got, 16mb maybe?

The biggest work RAM expansion released to consumers was the 4MB one. If I'm not mistaken, CartDev has 32MB of RAM, but that's not something you can take advantage of unless you're programming your own stuff. If you're programming your own stuff and able to design your own hardware, in principle you could add as much RAM as you want as long as you're within the electrical capabilities of the machine. If I remember correctly, only 32MB of that RAM would be accessible at once, but that's not exactly a crippling limitation.

I have heard of the fabled VF3 expansion that came 3d accelerator as well.

I doubt that ever got significantly beyond the proposal stage. There were rumors, but I've seen no indication that serious development took place. According to The Scribe, VF3 was ported (with poly count scaled down a good bit) to Saturn, but it took so long to finish that it was canned because they didn't want to hurt the Dreamcast launch.
 
To clarify:

4MB cart = Sega's official memory expansion cartridge for use by Capcom, SNK and a few other games (mostly 2D fighters). True 4-megabyte expansion.

8MB cart = made by Interact, not memory expansion but a gamesave cart. Sega's gamesave cart provides 512KB (or 4 MBit) of gamesave RAM. The Interact cart uses compression to store 1MB (8 MBit) of gamesaves, twice as much, thanks to which it's notoriously unreliable.

So yeah, the 8MB cart should really have been labeled 8MBit, but wasn't...
 
Originally posted by Curtis@Mar 12, 2003 @ 04:53 AM

VF3 was only ever on Dreamcast anyway.

not exactly true my friend....I have in a sega saturn mag (UK..) that AM2 had both the SAT and DC version of VF3 up and runnin'!...tho at the time of print, the DC was less then a month from it's Japanese release...so i guess they thought it would waste time/money releasing both of them.....
 
Originally posted by Gaz_2_k+Mar 12, 2003 @ 08:51 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gaz_2_k @ Mar 12, 2003 @ 08:51 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-Curtis@Mar 12, 2003 @ 04:53 AM

VF3 was only ever on Dreamcast anyway.

not exactly true my friend....I have in a sega saturn mag (UK..) that AM2 had both the SAT and DC version of VF3 up and runnin'!...tho at the time of print, the DC was less then a month from it's Japanese release...so i guess they thought it would waste time/money releasing both of them..... [/b][/quote]

Yep, and VF3 on Saturn run without any expansion cartridges
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The Interact cart uses compression to store 1MB (8 MBit) of gamesaves, twice as much, thanks to which it's notoriously unreliable.

I rather suspect that the unreliability being due to compression is rumor, and that the Interact carts just plain suck. It wouldn't be out of line for them.
 
Sega decided to cancel it because they didn't want two versions of the same game competing each other or a Saturn version existing, giving people another reason to hold off on purchasing a Dreamcast.

I've owned an Interact cart for some time now. It works just fine. Perhaps mine's just a magical @$#@ing Interact cart, and everyone else's cart is just a normal, common person's cart. In that case, I'll start the bidding at $150!!
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Originally posted by Blade_Hunter@Mar 13, 2003 @ 11:32 AM

I've owned an Interact cart for some time now. It works just fine. Perhaps mine's just a magical @$#@ing Interact cart, and everyone else's cart is just a normal, common person's cart.

Very lucky you are. Smashed mine with a hammer i did. Mad I was.
 
When I had to buy a new Saturn (as my mate screwed up my original when modding it) I went raking through 2nd hand shops which who would let me open them so I could find a 32pin saturn, when I bought it the guy told me he had something elsewhich I might want, which was a backup cart (id never bought one during the entire time I had my original saturn, dunno why) he said it was mine for £3 so I took it and am damn glad I did as I've needed the save space.

What I was wondering is what is this worth, in other words was £3 a good deal and its 8mbs (possibly 8mbits I dunno anyway it said 8 toushand and something to begin with) and its an official sega cart, is this a known common save cart and I'm just asking since Teaelon's post above saying the 8mb (or mbit) cart was made by interact.
 
If it's Sega branded, then it's a good cart. The Sega branded ones are the only ones you can use to save in game.

I have one, and it's given me no trouble.
 
Yeah its Sega branded and still had the box and sticker for the front of the cart, basically looked like who ever had sold it to the 2nd hand game shop had not wanted it in the first place (unwanted gift) or stolen it
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Actually, now that I think about it, I have a Memory Card Plus made by InterAct. If my memory is correct, I have saved to cart in a game before (I'm remembering one of the Shining games giving me the option and my doing so). I will check on this when I get the chance after I move. All of my Saturn stuff is packed up and secured at the moment.

This cart also serves as a territory lockout defeater, allowing me to play games from any region. Like I said, I've had no bad experiences with it so far.

My GameShark on the other hand...
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GAMESHARK BAAD! GAMESHARK BAD!!
 
I've been wanting a 4mb expansion cart and just looked at lik-sang again and noticed they have the Saturn Action Replay 4M plus for £17, it can be used as a 4mb expansion, 1mb expansion or 4mb save cart and has the action reply territoy bypassing ability, is this a good price and good cart as I could swear last time I checked they were asking around £35 but not sure.
 
Originally posted by JonnyCasino@Mar 16, 2003 @ 07:54 PM

I've been wanting a 4mb expansion cart and just looked at lik-sang again and noticed they have the Saturn Action Replay 4M plus for £17, it can be used as a 4mb expansion, 1mb expansion or 4mb save cart and has the action reply territoy bypassing ability, is this a good price and good cart as I could swear last time I checked they were asking around £35 but not sure.

You want a 4-in-1 (which is what that cart's commonly called, ignore the people who call them 5-in-1's) in your Saturn library.
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Fair warning: it's not really a save cart (can't be used for in-game saves, only to copy to/from internal save memory) and it'd be a trick getting 4Mb of save space out of it; the internal Flash memory is only 2Mb, and a quarter of that is occupied by the AR firmware.
 
Originally posted by chakan@Mar 16, 2003 @ 05:45 PM

Actually, now that I think about it, I have a Memory Card Plus made by InterAct. If my memory is correct, I have saved to cart in a game before (I'm remembering one of the Shining games giving me the option and my doing so). I will check on this when I get the chance after I move. All of my Saturn stuff is packed up and secured at the moment.

Mine did too, I remember being able save directly to it in Alone in the Dark 2.
 
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