Hacking Omega saves disappearing makes this cart a no-buy. Hoping I’ll be able to return it.

[j-marino]

I completed the first two cups in F-Zero Climax. Today, I did a clean boot and only had one cup completed. Powered off, booted with add-on. “RTS FILE DAMAGED.” Clean boot again, all progress deleted, except I still have the profile I created the first time I booted the game? This makes no sense and I’m tired of it.

I’m going to assume the answer will be that it’s an SD card compatibility issue, but I’m not really willing to try to work through it at this point. What’s the point in having a cart that’s this prone to wiping data and that you have to tip-toe through to avoid losing the time you spent playing the game? Lame.

Now I know why EverDrive is $40 more. That reminds me, power draw on this cart is also a pain in the ass. You get maybe three hours out of new batteries before you have to start worrying that the system will shut off at the worst time and corrupt all your saves.

 

[EZ-Flash2]

We respect every individual customer's choice.

 

[tiduscrying]

I've got no clue about the saving issues as I haven't gotten an Omega yet. One thing I do know well from owning the EZFlash IV is that you have to wait for the cart to save when you return to the menu or reboot the console. I would assume that the Omega is the same, no? Is there a little message popup that says anything about not turning the console off so the cart can save?

That reminds me, power draw on this cart is also a pain in the ass. You get maybe three hours out of new batteries before you have to start worrying that the system will shut off at the worst time and corrupt all your saves.

This is one thing I was worried about, but I guess with the SP it is a lot easier to manage since you have the power indicator telling you when your batteries are low. I've seen rechargeable battery packs specific for the AGB-001, but last time I checked they were $30.

As it stands right now, the Omega really looks like it shines the best on (some) SPs and Micros if you consider the power draw. @EZ-Flash2 maybe a future kernel update could add the function to see the console's battery percentage? I most certainly don't know the ins-and-outs of the GBA and how much access the cartridge has on the system and the system's information, but that would be pretty nice for people who use the AGB-001 and AA batteries.

 

[kuwanger]

I would assume that the Omega is the same, no? Is there a little message popup that says anything about not turning the console off so the cart can save?

No, currently there's a chip built in that writes the save directly to the microSD card. There's currently no indication when a write is happening or when it's finished. There's some hope in the future that there will a Boot with Addons patch that will give you some indication. Anyways, this is obviously a big problem because on one of my microSD card saves seem to be instant, but on another I was having to wait ~5 seconds or it seemed I'd have corruption issues. Whether this was entirely incompatibility with that microSD card or the wait time really was 5 seconds, I don't really know.

As it stands right now, the Omega really looks like it shines the best on (some) SPs and Micros if you consider the power draw. @EZ-Flash2 maybe a future kernel update could add the function to see the console's battery percentage?

There's no real way to measure the battery percentage directly. Instead you measure the voltage and some controller chip then basically trains on the voltage to approximate battery capacity/life. The GBA SP is much simpler and switches to red light when the voltage drops enough. So, the red light on an original cartridge seems to go red at about 2/3 empty (say 12 hours total) and the EZ-Omega seems to go red at about the 1/2 empty (5.5 hours total).

So, yea, pretty big drop in the battery life. My tests if interested.