"Don't claim things as yours that aren't..."
That is accusing me of plagiarism which was your point originally. I never made that claim and I take offense to you insisting that I did. Yes, I copied your post to a pastebin in order to put a bunch of random info into one easy to view place that was supposed to be for my own personal use. I did not publish it anywhere official, I was using it strictly for troubleshooting and I never once claimed it was mine.
So, again, please do not call me a plagiarist. And yes, it is sloppy. It's a pastebin with random info in it dude. That is kind of the point. I copied a bunch of information from a lot of places that may or may not be valuable. I did add your name to the pastebin though. And I will be deleting the whole thing when my purposes are done. Most people would have just said, "oh hey that's my post from NeoGaf" and, at worst, asked me to add a citation if it really bothered them. Not accuse me of claiming it as my own work that I'm presenting to others when that is clearly not the case. That's just not cool man.
All you had to do was apologize and add in the citation, you know. Why are you trying to turn this into some big argument, I don't get it... Thanks for adding the citation though, that should solve the issue.
Anyway, I did do the test I mentioned with the MB128. I can confirm that it does not get any power from the PCE when it is powered off and the MB128 is plugged in. I took the batteries out and turned the machine off and after a few hours I checked and all of the saves on the MB128 are gone. The device does work when it does not have any batteries in so I guess it does draw power of some kind...but only with the machine on. So, in case you are worried about the built-in capacitors rapidly discharging as your change your batteries, you can turn your system on, keep the MB128 plugged in, pull out the old batteries and put new back in without issue. I performed this several times while having the Private Eye Doll memory manager up and it caused zero issues.
Alright, this is good to know. What I remember hearing, though, is that the MB128 has a capacitor in it that holds the saves when the batteries are removed. Thanks to your test here we know that it will not draw power while the system is off, but can last at least a few hours with the system on. But does it draw power from the system to keep the MB128's saves intact while the system is on, or is it just draining that capacitor and you lose your saves regardless once that runs out, presuming that that is what's going on (and I think there is a capacitor inside the MB128 from what I remember?)?
This isn't a really important question, as if you leave the system on it certainly will hold your saves long enough to swap out the batteries, but it is something I've been wondering regardless. You've answered one question though, and that's good.
I did create an A Train save, which has built-in MB128 support, and Private Eye Doll was able to see/move it. I have not tried any other game with MB128 native support though.
... Oh right, that one has a manager that lets you see the MB128's files too, unlike Emerald Dragon. I should have remembered or checked that...
I agree that the makers of the MB128 should have created a memory manager disc. I believe somebody was actually working on just such a thing a while back but nothing came of it. I recently ran into a similar issue with a 3DO I picked up and there was a program called Game Guru which is a memory manager that could compress save files down to almost nothing on the 3DO's memory file system. And it would work with the very expensive external save unit as well. Something like that would be quite nice for the PCE.
The whole save "solution" on the PCE is such a mess, with so many different save backup units, multiple types of ways to back up those backups, the absurdly small 2KB save memory space, etc. I know that the concept of being able to save games to a console itself was new at the time, but their solutions, while they work, have issues. But at least the PCE/Turbo CD has a built-in memory manager in the system card to view and delete the files saved to the system, though it does not display their file sizes.
That the memory managers for the MB128, or for the system itself if you want a manager that lets you view file sizes, are attached to games and not the system reminds be a bit of the N64, though -- recall how all N64 games that support the Controller Pak have a memory manager you can access by holding down Start when you turn the system on, but it's custom for each game, not a standard application. All games have the same exact functions, in that you can view and delete files but not move or copy them (those things you can only do with a PC backup device or a Gameshark), but the look of the screen, how many files you can see on screen at a time, whether it supports only viewing the card in controller 1 or all four, and such, varies from game to game, so some games have better managers than others. It's a bit annoying. (Bust-A-Move '99 is one of my favorites... you see a whole card at a time and it supports all four.)
As for the 3DO though, I have one of those 3DO backup addons (a Japan-only release, for some crazy reason). It's pretty nice, though you mostly have to use it as a backup unit, games generally can't save directly to it I think... but still, the 3DO internal memory is relatively small (what is it, 32KB?), so the 256KB backup unit is very nice to have. And it's great that the manager is a single disc which does everything, too, not separate managers in various different games.
However, just like the 3DO itself, the manager has a welded-down battery inside it that saves the files, so just like 3DO systems those things are going to start dying at some point and need replacement. The MB128's replaceable 4 AA battery solution may cost more in batteries, but it's really nice to have batteries that are easy to replace without soldering!
As far as the warning goes you could throw in something like, "this has caused some users to lose their system save files". You can link to my video if you want. I can leave it up and unlisted. It's odd that my Japanese Duo-R, which is very common in Japan, would have that issue with the MB128 where your US released setup does not haha. But you might make mention of my unit, my mods and that others have stated they have a similar issue. Something to tell people that they should use at their own risk. And maybe add in more info for Private Eye Doll to try it first. Again, you can link to my video if you want or create your own or wait for me to do a write-up. I did get my streaming pc/setup running tonight so I might be able to do that soon.
Yeah, I should add some info about Private Eye Dol's manager and a warning that some setups (though not mine) have problems with the Emerald Dragon/Linda Cube manager. I'll do that soon.
I don't believe I could get the utility to show up for Vasteel 2 (going off memory here and I might be wrong) and Popful Mail I simply couldn't make heads or tails of. It kept acting like it was doing things but wouldn't actually do anything. It was really odd. I might try it again though because it really looked like it should have worked.
Huh. I don't own those games so I haven't tried them myself... but it is tricky, messing around with managers with all Japanese-language text, you don't want to accidentally hit the 'delete everything' option or something if you've got files you want to keep on the thing! :p
