Ive read up on how the memory works in the saturn and already ordered one of those action replay carts since I want to play imports but suck at soldering so the bios mod is out of the question for me.
My biggest concern are the game saves, apparently the internal memory is pretyy small (the included racing game save takes up the entire space) and Ive read reports of people losing/corrupted saves from memory cards. Is this a widespread problem? I plan on playing some rpgs so losing saves would suck.
1) Clean the Saturn's cartridge slot. Use something small to pick out whatever you can from it first. (You'd be surprised at what can accumulate at the bottom of a cartridge slot over several years.) Then blow out whatever small particles you can with a can of compressed air. Finally, use rubbing alcohol with a high isopropyl concentration (preferably >90%) to clean the contacts. Try wetting a piece of cloth with it and wrapping that cloth around an old credit card or something similar; that's usually a good fit. Repeat with a clean section of cloth until it's no longer picking up any more grime. Try not to be too forceful with any of these methods; you don't want to forcefully push the connector pins apart further than they're supposed to be during normal use.
2) Clean the contacts of the Action Replay cartridge itself (and the contacts of any other cartridge you may want to use on it). Q-tips and rubbing alcohol should be sufficient. You can opt to open the cartridge in order to reach all areas of the contacts more easily. Repeat until the cotton swabs are also picking up no more dirt.
3) Insert the cartridge into the system firmly and never remove it unless you have to in order to prevent unnecessary wear. (There is a very small number of games that are incompatible with the Action Replay, so you shouldn't ever
have to remove it for normal use cases.) If the Saturn has difficulty detecting the cartridge or reading from / writing to it, try
ever so slightly pulling the cartridge outward instead of leaving it inserted all the way, then turn on the system and try again.
You can't save data directly to the Action Replay because Saturn games don't detect it as a save cartridge. So, you have to use the system's internal memory while playing, then copy the save data to the cartridge via the Action Replay's menu once you're finished. Same thing in reverse when loading a game; you have to copy the save file from the Action Replay back to the system. Usually not too much of a hassle for most games, but this can be a pain for games that support multiple save files but also take up a huge amount of memory, in which case it's often more convenient to use normal save cartridges to juggle multiple playthroughs at once.
FWIW, I recommend sticking with the internal memory when you can just to minimize issues, and to play one game at a time until you're done with it, then copy the save file to the cartridge and consider it more of an archival storage solution than your primary storage. The Saturn's cartridge slot just isn't reliable and you're probably going to have problems with it eventually one way or another.
If you ever need to change the system's internal battery without wiping the internal memory, then you can do so by changing the battery while the system is powered on. Not sure if this carries any risks, though.
