Mario Kart 64 won't save...

[djlooka]

Hi everyone,
A friend of mine recently brought me a n64 cartridge of Mario Kart 64 because he wanted me to fix it as it won't save any record.
I opened the cartridge with my Gamebit and discovered it's a "half board" one: it has no battery
I opened my own copy of Mario Kart 64 and discovered mine has no battery, too, but mine saves the records.
Is there any way to fix it?

P.S.: the only difference between my cart and my friend's is that mine is marked as "(C)(M) 1996, 1997 Nintendo NUS-EUR 1"  and his is just "(C)(M) 1996 Nintendo NUS-EUR".
Is mine a sort of rev.2 of the same cart? Are rev.1 not saving at all? I remember when I was a kid and used to play MK64 at a friend of mine's and his cart used to save, too.
A photo of the two carts is available http://desperatenerd.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/mariokart64_cart_comparison.jpg

[l_oliveira]

It's the small 8 legs chip that store the saves. It's a serial FLASH memory. That's why the cart has no battery.

I Suggest that you buy another N64 game (an bad, worthless game) which also has the save function and replace the 8 legs chip.

[djlooka]

I see. The chip is labeled "BU98500 712 H86".
I also discovered that there are many versions of the same chip, would they make any difference?

I'm not into breaking another cart to save this one:
I love videogames and think that any working game should be left untouched, so I'd rather find another possibility which didn't involve the death of another cart.

[l_oliveira]

Then give up, because that flash chip is an custom part which is only used on Nintendo 64 cartridges...

Honestly, Mario Kart 64 is one of the FEW Nintendo 64 games I consider worthy of being played nowadays.  I would name a few other games and they would be all Nintendo 1st party games with very, very few exceptions ...

It's not a big deal kill an crappy game to save an great title. But then, to each one their own.

[phreak97]

I dont think it makes much difference which version of the chip you use.. my Dr. V64 allows saving for roms played off cd by having any game plugged into the top. it just saves whatever game's save onto that cartridge, essentially using the cartridge's flash ram as a memory card. if there were different versions which were significant, you would probably have to match up the version to the rom to get a successful save.
surely you wouldnt feel too bad about removing the save function from some crappy wrestling game with the label ripped off or something? alternatively you could remove the save function from a game like perfect dark, which gives the option of cartridge or memory card saves, then just use the memory card.. probably not perfect dark though:P

[CZroe]

A DX256 should do the trick. It has 256 selectable save slots for N64 games. My first one was pre-modified to also function as an "emulation adapter" for an original V64 but my second one worked as it should even with original games.

Anyway, it only works with 4K EEPROM games, which Mario kart 64 is, so see the list here if you are looking for another game to salvage one from:
http://www.elitendo.com/n64/usa_boot_save_list.html

The other internal save types were SRAM, 16K EEPROM, and FlashRAM, all of which were much less common than 4K EEPROM.

[djlooka]

http://www.elitendo.com seems to be down at the moment 

[CZroe]

Their splash image is broken but you can still click the "broken image" placeholder in most browsers or click my direct link to the relevant page.