I recall back in the 80's there were a lot of electronic musical instruments made out of 8031's and Z-80's. As music technology progressed, they started storing parameters and "patches" in (lithium) battery backed SRAM. Many, many manufacturers later made memory-expansion boards that used to do this -- stacked DIP SRAMs up (except for Chip Enable). They seemed to be reliable enough, considering many of the instruments I saw spent a lot of time "on the road." And since it's a one-off university project I'm sure you'd be fine. Hey, even wire-wrap is useful in a DIP-only world in some cases. Can't say I do it much anymore, but I know for a fact that lots of universities and colleges still use it to some degree.

GB