There a number of solutions to making life easier, some used back in the old days. Examples include connecting eight switches to a port and toggling in a small program to read the data, store and loop, putting the boot loader in a PROM that can be switched with SRAM. The battery back up idea is interesting, but probably a bit more challenging, since the 1101 SRAM devices use both 5 volts and -9 volts.