Why do video game cartridges and motherboards need a battery to maintain save data but a simple SD card does not?
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I’m assuming that you are talking about old video game like a game boy cartridge? Mother boards and those cartridges operate on volatile memory (ex. RAM) onboard and therefore require power to maintain the data.
For game cartridges this is because flash memory (non volatile) was prohibitively expensive when those games where being manufactured. For motherboards the volatile memory is only used to operate the cmos, bios, and clock information, the programming required to start your system.
As far as a motherboard goes I’ll explain it in mechanical terms. A car uses a battery to crank a starter and ignite a spark in the block. Once the car is running it uses the alternator to run the electronics leaving the battery to charge for the next start up.
The watch battery on your mobo allows the cpu systems to come online before the main data storage is online activating the programs and accessing memory required to make the computer work. (Not a perfect analogy as the PSU of your computer immediately turns on and powers up those systems.) but for visual aid I think it works.
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