battery-backed
Adjective
Meaning
(electronics, of a device) Using a battery to maintain operation when not powered by the main electrical supply (e.g. during a blackout).
(electronics, computing) Using a battery to maintain volatile memory when powered off.
(video games, of saved game data) Written to a volatile memory chip in a video game cartridge to maintain the data when not in use.
Source: en.wiktionary.orgSynonyms
Examples
A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95 Mbit of ROM data (48 Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8 Mbit of battery-backed RAM.
Encrypted variants of the 68000, being the Hitachi FD1089 and FD1094 store decryption keys for opcodes and opcode data in battery-backed memory, was used in certain Sega arcade systems including System 16 to prevent piracy and illegal bootleg games.
Later computers, including all IBM-compatibles with 80286 CPUs, had a battery-backed nonvolatile BIOS memory (CMOS RAM chip) that held BIOS settings.
Cartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.
In the interim period, IBM-compatible PCs including the IBM AT held configuration settings in battery-backed RAM and used a bootable configuration program on disk, not in the ROM, to set the configuration options contained in this memory.
Instead of battery-backed RAM, the modern Wintel machine may store the BIOS configuration settings in flash ROM, perhaps the same flash ROM that holds the BIOS itself.