Did the Sega Saturn Backup Memory use battery power or PS1-like memory?
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I'm trying to find out whether the Sega Saturn Backup Memory, the memory card for the Saturn, used the battery-requiring form of memory that Nintendo used for their Nintendo 64's Controller Pak, or the no-battery, permanent storage memory kind used by Sony for their PlayStation memory cards.
Among other sources, I have looked at https://obsoletemedia.org/sega-saturn-backup-memory/ as well as the Wikipedia page for the Sega Saturn. I also made image searches, but while some images do show a battery, that might actually be the memory card for the Sega CD rather than the Saturn, so it's ambiguous.
Furthermore, if it does use a battery, is it soldered on (like in the Controller Pak) or easily replaceable today by somebody without a soldering iron and the relevant skills?
I'm basically wondering if I can safely buy one today for my Sat or if it will have a dying/dead battery that has to be replaced.
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Console:
By the looks of https://www.retrogarden.co.uk/features/how-to-replace-the-battery-on-a-sega-saturn/ , it does make use of battery-backed up RAM.
One piece of advice to you would be don’t bother buying a backup cartridge, the internal memory does just a good enough job, however – if you are buying it on ebay, you may find that this greets you every time you boot up your machine.
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This basically means your battery backup is screwed.
The battery isn't soldered directly to the board, but the connector is. It looks like a CMOS battery you'd find on a computer motherboard, and the specific battery type is a CR2032 3V which are commonly used for this application:
It even looks like this battery is accessible without having to fully take apart the console (image from first link):
So I think it's safe to buy one second hand, and replacing this battery is probably a common thing to have to do all these years later.
Back-up Memory Cartridge:
The https://segaretro.org/Saturn_Backup_Memory did not have a battery by the looks of the motherboards seen in the link:
You can also see in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vFqpvbJdT8 that no battery is present.
