Edit: forgot i need a memory card too. I cant find any of my old ones outside a horrible 3rd party one which never works. Any suggestions on a reliable one?
N64 memory cards all do have batteries in them, so for future-proofing, my favorites are the Interact/Performance cards, since they have a battery clip inside -- no soldering needed to replace the battery, just unscrew it and put in a regular CR2032! Nintendo's cards, of course, have welded-tabs CR2032s inside. Ugh. Of course some N64 games use batteries in the carts themselves too; most games that save don't, but some do, including some major first-party titles -- OoT, F-Zero X, and some more. And the system is getting old enough that some of those batteries are starting to die.
The closest to that would be an InterAct Dex Drive, and you'd probably need an older operating system and a serial to USB adapter to get it running.
I remember using one to back up my PS1 saves a while back.
I have an N64 DexDrive that I attach to my old computer that has a serial port, and it does work fine; it's great to have a way to back up those memory cards. There are some memory cards it won't back up for some unknown reason, but it's a good thing to have. But yeah, that it requires a serial port is a problem for any computer from the past decade-plus. While there are some newer things that let you back up N64 memory card data to a PC, most of the cheap N64-to-PC adapters unfortunately do not support memory card backup from what I know... bah. I know USB N64 adapters that do that do exist, such as the Adaptoid from the early '00s, but good luck finding one of those things... unless there's something newer that does it as well? There should be, for sure, but offhand I don't remember.
