Hmm, recently I discovered the Memory Base 128, an underutilized external memory device for the PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16. I know that it's a memory device that attaches through the controller port, which can hold up to 128 KB of save memory powered by AA batteries. This is ideal because it connects to the controller port, which is accessible to both card and CD games... The internal backup RAM of the Super CD / Duo is only 2K, and memory cards like the Tennokoe Bank take up the card slot of the console -- which makes them only useful for backup purposes. It's kind of a shame really, you get 192K of extra RAM with the Super CD, and a whopping 2MB with the arcade card, but it's not persistent.
I do know that games such as A-Train III (which I own) support directly saving/loading with this, and a few others have a special backup memory manager but play using the internal save RAM. But it's a very small set of games overall.
The Memory Base 128 tried to address this save memory shortage, and never really took off. It seems like most games used very small saves, even when they could have taken advantage of it: Was it because of needing to share the internal 2K RAM among several games and not wanting to be greedy? Or was it some kind of certification requirement to release games for the PC Engine? I guess it makes sense that requiring an external peripheral for extra save memory would probably hurt sales, so that's why it was optional.
Anyway, I'd be curious about reading/writing data to it -- homebrew music applications or RPGs/simulations with lots of persistent state could benefit from the added storage. I don't think any emulator supports this memory card at the moment. Is anyone else familiar with this device / tried to make documentation for it?
PC Engine dev - Memory Base 128?
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PC Engine dev - Memory Base 128?
Last edited by Overkill on Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: PC Engine dev - Memory Base 128?
Yes / No.Overkill wrote:Is anyone else familiar with this device / tried to make documentation for it?
The MB128 was released in 1992/1993 or so, which was nearing the tail-end of the PCE's life, pretty much.
Re: PC Engine dev - Memory Base 128?
the only docs for the MB128 that I've seen are the ones by MooZ in this thread on the PCEdev forums.
Re: PC Engine dev - Memory Base 128?
Oh, thank you for sharing that! :D
That thread gives enough idea of how to read/write to the MB128 through the joypad port, which is excellent. It seems the filesystem structure is still unknown, aside from the initial header after formatting. Still, you could probably just decide on your own format if you don't care about co-existing with other saves. I guess it'd be nice to play correctly with other programs, ideally, but I guess that will have to wait on more investigation.
Hopefully in a couple weeks the MB128 I ordered on ebay will arrive in the mail to play around with... it would be fun to try and poke around at it :>
And yeah, I guess that seems like a pretty straightforward explanation for its lack of adoption if it was that late in the life of the PCE.
That thread gives enough idea of how to read/write to the MB128 through the joypad port, which is excellent. It seems the filesystem structure is still unknown, aside from the initial header after formatting. Still, you could probably just decide on your own format if you don't care about co-existing with other saves. I guess it'd be nice to play correctly with other programs, ideally, but I guess that will have to wait on more investigation.
Hopefully in a couple weeks the MB128 I ordered on ebay will arrive in the mail to play around with... it would be fun to try and poke around at it :>
And yeah, I guess that seems like a pretty straightforward explanation for its lack of adoption if it was that late in the life of the PCE.
Re: PC Engine dev - Memory Base 128?
Oh I've also been looking into interacting with a MB128 but I have yet to even make a working homebrew program in assembly (couldn't find any guides either).
I have KOEI's Save-kun (which is the same thing as MB128).
I just burned Private Eyedol to use as a manager, but it would be great if there was a homebrew program that could do it from a flashcart. Even better if we could backup it up to an Everdrive's SD card.
I have KOEI's Save-kun (which is the same thing as MB128).
I just burned Private Eyedol to use as a manager, but it would be great if there was a homebrew program that could do it from a flashcart. Even better if we could backup it up to an Everdrive's SD card.