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Chinese 8MB BenChi RAM Card.

Cecilia Chen - Dec 4, 2001

		Cecilia Chen		Dec 4, 2001
			Ni hao, (Hello!) How is everyone? I recently was shopping at some stores, and I noticed that one retailer was selling some new Chinese 8MB BenChi RAM Cards. The person who was at the desk told me that the card is used for playing 4-Meg RAM games with increased load speeds. I'm not quite sure what he fully meant/talking about, but he explained something about the card using the extra 4MB to remember data (Im not sure the what the term he used, I think its called Caching? Like a PC does?). Maybe he couldn't pronounce it right. He said they just got the product in, and he showed me a game from Capcom called "Shadow over Misteria. When he used the card, it seemed to play with very little load times at all. When he used the regular 4MB card, it took much longer (Like 5 to 6 Seconds) to load each screen? The initial loading of the game at boot up seemed to perform the same as the regular card though. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but the he was using a HK Silver and not a real SS Disk. Smiles! Cec,

		Gamer Z		Dec 4, 2001
			Sup all, I finaly got my lazy ass registed Ya, I'v seen those cards before. But theres no way im paying 60 bux for one of those. Its not worth it when you can play the game normaly without the super fast loading. At least they named the card appropriately cuz it is pretty freaken fast. But the only store that had it said they were still waiting for more from HK/CN. But dude, for 60 Bux you could get a ton of HK games! its not worth it, unless you have cash to blow, don't already have a 4MB card, or are just crazy. L8ter all!

		IceDigger		Dec 4, 2001
			it's bullshit. no game supports more than 4 MB of ram, so the extra 4 megs in an 8 meg cart would simply go unused, and the saturn doesn't support it for caching either (the saturn would need to know to load the data from cache instead of cd, which it doesn't). all it could be is an 8 meg saveram, those are common.. 8 mbit, not mbyte, tho.

		ExCyber		Dec 4, 2001
			This is interesting. I'm not familiar enough with the Saturn BIOS to know how something like this might be implemented, but either the BIOS or the game code needs to be hacked for something like this to work. It could be that the game you were shown was a copy hacked to use the extra RAM.

		IceDigger		Dec 4, 2001
			Hmmm... I'v heard about it, but I never actualy saw one of these things so I can't really comment. But as to Arakons post, NO game can use more than 4MB (How could it!?), but from what she says the guy told her, the games don't ever see this memory. They just use the 4MB as normal, and the card itself caches data in the upper portions untill needed again. So rather than loading up, it can just pull what it has already. Im not exactly sure what the card does to get speed, but thats not the first time I'v seen things like this. Memory managment/Save state/Expanded ram stuff has come out all the time in Asia. I have one for my SNES which saves states and stores data in upper areas of ram which normal games don't even know exsists. And if I want to, I can dump and reload my save games. I'v seen some that also lets you copy/save game data from SNES carts to backup cards as well. So, Im not supprised at all, but Im also equaly not supprised if the Chinese store was doing some cheap trick to fool gamers into buying crapy products. No disrespect to girls, but I think they do things like that more so to them, since they probably won't know as much about games. But to be honest, its pretty rare people even do that. Most stuff works fine (Except from some hardware being pirate). PS: ExCyber also brings up a good point In the rare case it is a trick, Alot of mock up demo systems are hacked to bits to wow people, but the real deal is not so hot performance wise. (Edited by Trenton_net at 10:37 pm on Dec. 4, 2001)

		IceDigger		Dec 4, 2001
			Hey Cec, don't feel bad but I think you'v been duped! My uncle is coming for a visit this X-mas, and I asked him if he could get me one of these cards sometime before he left China. As it turns out he says these cards "are deceive!" (Pardon my poor translation LOL). He says the store guys have a game system playing with a regular 4MB card, and when people come in (usually while they are already playing it), they give the sales pitch about loading being long. Then they use the new card, but instead of showing the console playing they use a very clever and convincing tape thatâs edited to have less loading. When you pay like 50$+ for it, and take it home, it works with 4MB games, but only because its really a regular card, with a different Shell on it. He says their trying to dump all sorts of left over 3 rd party hardware so a lot of retailers are trying to trick the casual gamers. A lot of the regulars know itâs a scam even though its very convincing, but people like Cec probably can't tell the difference since their not so hard core like we are. He also said they have another way of doing it via swapping cards/Cds, but the big places do this way. Ahh well, don't feel bad Cec! I once bought a N64 game thinking it was such a great deal! Then it turns out it was a BLANK card!!!! IT WAS BLANK DAMMMIT!

		ExCyber		Dec 4, 2001
			The problem with the "the cart itself caches the CD accesses" explanation is that a normal Saturn cart is in no position to interrupt and modify CD accesses; the only ways I know of that it could possibly do this is by patching RAM-resident BIOS or library routines to call code on the cart instead, but as far as I can recall the CD access routines in the BIOS are not RAM-resident, and I'm pretty sure that it would be somewhat tricky to patch the SGL calls. It *might* be possible to do a real cache cart by using the slot used by the VCD card, but technical details on that interface seem to be nearly impossible to come by; I suspect that its operation was only known to Sega, Hitachi, Victor, and possibly Yamaha. I find the "doctored video" explanation to be much more feasible, given the circumstances...

		IceDigger		Dec 4, 2001
			hey ex, check email and/or hit irc please.

		Stregano		Dec 12, 2001
			where can i get some hk games. every1 always say, hk this and hk that and u always get hooked up with books of hk games (now i am exaggertaing) , but where can i get some hk games for cheap?

		IceDigger		Dec 12, 2001
			HKs are simply pressed (as opposed to burnt) pirated copies of the games. you can get them, as the name says, in hongkong.