And lastly, don't forget that you'll need proper S-RTC support: if you just give it the system time, you won't be able to pass the FEoEZ test program on startup without a hack.
I'll burn that bridge as I cross it, for now I'm just trying to get Momotarou Dentetsu Happy working, I'll worry about FEoEZ later.
Just be sure to keep compatibility with my .rtc save format if you port over my code. SNESGT and Snes9X WIP also use it.
I'll look into it. My only worry is that the MAME and MESS architecture is very strict about how it handles saving NVRAM - the data is deserialized into an .nv file, and there are no methods provided for saving ancillary data streams in arbitrary files. I'm sure there's some way I can do it, I just can't think of any at the moment.