Saturn memory cartridge died...

I got a Memory Card Plus from Interact. It served me well, offering me nearly infinte amount of sapce for my saved games. I could play Lunar 2 EB, Rayearth, Dragon Force, all Shining Force Scenarios, make dozens of custom SFZ3 characters, and it wasn't even 50% used. Heaven.

But one day, haven got torn apart...

I found Assault Suit Leynos 2 lying in my closet, and decided to re-play it. When the game displayed the save select screen, it crashed. When I rebooted my saturn, the memory cart wasn't recognized. I removed, cleaned, and put it again, and it was recognized after a few tries. The saturn had never refused that cart before, so I got into the memory manager to see what happened. It was all weird. There were strange saved files, with corrupt names and gigantic sizes. The free space size was huge too (a few millions...), and I could see some of my files mixed in the garbage. I tried deleting some of the bogus files, but the Saturn always froze when I did it. I also tried formatting the whole cart, no deal.

Then, in despair, I opened the cart, tried to clean the contacts the best I could, and, when I closed it and tried it... nothing happened. The Saturn acts as if there is no cart plugged in, no matter what I do.

I assume all my saves are gone... but I'd like to as the people around here, who knows far more than me on the issue, if there is any chance of recovering the cart.

Maybe, some hard format by hardwiring it?

Is there any way to recover it, or should I start looking for a new one?
 
Well, it may have nothing to do with, but I had quite the same problem once... no way to make my cart function... until I discovered the cart wasnt faulty... it was the Saturn cart port that had gone with the wind...

Well, at that time, I hadnt a 5in1 cart, and I had to switch the country & ram carts while booting the japanese games that required ram cart... well, a few monthes of that treatment and my saturn cart slot was dead
sad.gif


Had to change the saturn... could have repaired the slot I guess, but I'm a total zero when it comes to electronic things...

Bad luck anyway...
 
My cart port is working fine, I think. The 4MB RAM cart still works.

I can buy other cart... buuut, it'll get me broke for 3 weeks...

Also, I simply don't want to toss the old cart away, if there is any remote chance of getting it to work again.

BTW, I think it's not an official cart. I don't see the Interact name on it's board, and there's a sispicious looking wiring... either it's made in Hong Kong, either Interact stuff is really cheap.
 
Toss that POS Interact thing....these are notorious for being unreliable, as you experienced yourself....and get an official Sega backup RAM cart...more expensive but worth the peace of mind. I got a Japanese (white) one which works fine on my US Saturn :-D
 
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