New answers tagged game-cartridge
1
The NES has 2KB of built-in RAM. EEPROM on a cartridge could store "game-save" data with power off, but was slow to access. Battery-backed RAM (8KB in all cartridges I know of--not 32KB) could be used not only to store game-state data, but could also be used as an extension to the 2KB of RAM in the system. Some cartridges that didn't need to hold game ...
5
http://micro-64.com/database/gamesave.shtml lists three different methods of saving games on the Nintendo 64:
EEPROM, 512 or 2048 Bytes
battery-backed SRAM, 32 KBytes
Flash, 128 KBytes
You'd have to analyse each games saving requirements to know why the designers chose which options, but the trade-offs between EEPROM and battery-backed SRAM in the late 90s ...
2
Cost would be the main factor. Only 512 byte and 2048 byte EEPROM chips were used in Nintendo 64 cartridges, while the SRAM chips were much bigger at 32Kb (32,768 bytes). EEPROM at this size would've been too expensive. Some Nintendo 64 cartridges used 128Kb (131,072 byte) flash memory, but this would've been the most expensive option.
Another factor ...
8
Various claims have been made about this, mostly along the lines of "SRAM is cheaper" (and compared to flash RAM, it is).
But the most credible reference I've seen explains that of the options available at the time, SRAM was the least expensive one that could still fit save data for those games. EEPROM was less expensive, but had a much smaller space ...
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