It looks like all of this started when Rene was measuring the power consumption of Genesis carts and found that while real games were drawing 10-20mA, his Mega Everdrive was drawing more like 130mA.
https://db-electronics.ca/wiki/wikis/consoles/sega-genesis/#Game_Cart_Current_ConsumptionWithout investigating the specific parts on his Mega Everdrive, checking any other Everdrives or contacting Krikzz, he seemingly assumed that this was a typical amount for all Everdrives and wrote his article.
It just so happens that before even learning that Rene was using a Mega Everdrive, Krikzz posted those youtube links on his forum showing the much smaller 25-30mA increase and commented “As for mega ed v1: testing of this cart will not give clear results, because it use SDRAM and FPGA which has pretty high power consumption.”
Later, he wrote in Rene's comment section:
So, what exactly your measurements shows, except like normal power consumption of cartridge components?
MAX-3000 at 50Mhz
Cyclone II at 133Mhz
MT48 SDRAM with forced overabundant refresh cycles.
Look at datasheet and you will see that it is pretty much normal power consumption for such hardware configuration
So the 130mA current is normal for this particular cart, and it's being drawn from the power rail, not through the bus.
Another person on the article page gave a good (possible) explanation for why the diode clamps probably aren't drawing any significant current - the same kind of clamping is done during bus conflicts, and so parts that use the bus are built not to bleed current this way.
I'm still going to wait until someone at least takes a multimeter measurement, but if what that guy says is true, the Neo Geo mutlicarts are likely OK. I actually wonder if those cheap Chinese chips even have diode clamps in them, to be honest.
