Game Action Replay-NES

[rbudrick]

Hi Folks,

For those that don't know, this is a game saving device for the NES, much like a save state for an emulator.

I bought on of these a couple months back on Ebay and it worked fine for a while, but now it is acting like crap. Basically, I can almost never get it to work anymore. The conatcts are clean, and I replaced the contacts in my NES--basically it takes a couple hundred tries to get it to work. The contact board ion the GAR s thinner than other carts, but I reversed the connector on my NES (with a bit of modification) to use the tighter end that connects to the NES motherboard (much better connection for games, if anyone wants to give this a shot :-). Now this does wonders for getting games to work better, but the GAR still won't usually work.

So...I was checking out the DP7 guide and it mentions that the GAR's operating code is on a RAM chip instead of a ROM. WTF!!?? Why on earth would a company do this? Basically, when the battery dies in it, the device is a beer coaster. Sucks, huh? I checked the battery and it's still giving a full charge when I put a meter to it, but I really don't know what it's deal is (I think the battery is dying..not holding a charge well anymore).

Does anyone know if the GAR is backed up like a rom somewhere online (I haven't found it)? It sure would be nice to at least know that this item is archived.

Does anyone know if the memory can be replaced? If not, does anyone have a dead one (one that's definitely dead, not like mine) they could experiment on--basically throw a ROM chip of the code on there that can't be erased to see if it works?

Well folks, hope you can help. If not, thanks for reading my whiny post!

_Rob

[AlanD]

Hmmm Kevin Horton is a tech guru extraordinaire. Do a search for Kevin Horton and NES and you should find his page and email. I long ago loaned him my functioning GAR and he managed to dump the code without killing the cart. Using that code I know he has managed to fix a few of them. I can't speak for him but if you email him he might do it. Not sure of what he may want for the service. Hope that helps somewhat.
AlanD