How do I backup and restore a Game Boy cartridge save file?

The internal battery in Game Boy cartridges eventually depletes, which erases its temporary contents (the game progress saved in RAM). How can I backup and restore this game save (e.g., the original Pokémon) between battery replacements or as a precaution against the effects of time?

sean

• electronics
• ram
• video-games

Comments

• wizzard0: I believe the overlap between archivists and gamers is rather small; you might consider sharing this question on forums where people are emulating consoles - they usually know how to read and write cartridges and firmware, both ROM and RAM.
• Trevor Owens: I think this is a great question for this site and there is a good group of folks in digital preservation who want to get into video game preservation. See also: http://mith.umd.edu/preserving-virtual-snes-games/
• Bill Lefurgy: Agree that this is a good question for the site. We need a central body of information on migrating data.

Answer by Dmitry Brant

There is an Arduino-based tutorial for reading the ROM and RAM from the GameBoy cartridge: http://www.insidegadgets.com/2011/03/28/gbcartread-arduino-based-gameboy-cart-reader-%E2%80%93-part-2-read-the-ram/

And for writing back to RAM: http://www.insidegadgets.com/2011/04/07/gbcartread-arduino-based-gameboy-cart-reader-%e2%80%93-part-3-write-to-ram

Or you can switch to playing the games in an emulator.

Comments