Hacking 3-in-1+AKAIO saving

[BrokenCD]

I made another thread about gba saves with AKAIO and the 3in1. The thread is here. After receiving advice from Another World, and attempting to follow said advice, I realize that the GBA saves made by AKAIO just don't work. I now realize my problem is more like the one in this thread. It is NOT a 3in1 battery issue. Everything works perfectly fine with gba exploader.

I was having problems getting AKAIO to load saves made by exploader. But after still not getting them to work, I started a new game. After saving and restarting, it asked me if I would like to back up my sav file. I say yes. The only problem is the .gba.sav file is tiny.. 16KB i think. And it did not overwrite a previous .bak file that I must have made myself in the past. When I load the game again, it loads the tiny save file. It obviously has no data, so the game thinks there is no save file. Earlier today I had tried saving with a game that did not have a sav file. It seemed to work. But I just loaded it up, played for a bit then saved again. The same thing happened. The data is gone, and the game thinks there is no safe file. Obviously, I think this is a bug with AKAIO.

 

[gotchaff]

I made another thread about gba saves with AKAIO and the 3in1. The thread is here. After receiving advice from Another World, and attempting to follow said advice, I realize that the GBA saves made by AKAIO just don't work. I now realize my problem is more like the one in this thread. It is NOT a 3in1 battery issue. Everything works perfectly fine with gba exploader.

I was having problems getting AKAIO to load saves made by exploader. But after still not getting them to work, I started a new game. After saving and restarting, it asked me if I would like to back up my sav file. I say yes. The only problem is the .gba.sav file is tiny.. 16KB i think. And it did not overwrite a previous .bak file that I must have made myself in the past. When I load the game again, it loads the tiny save file. It obviously has no data, so the game thinks there is no save file. Earlier today I had tried saving with a game that did not have a sav file. It seemed to work. But I just loaded it up, played for a bit then saved again. The same thing happened. The data is gone, and the game thinks there is no safe file. Obviously, I think this is a bug with AKAIO.

This is basically identical to my problem. I'll try gba exploader and see if it changes anything.

Thank you!

 

[Another World]

.bak are back up files and are not loaded by the firmware. the 3in1 support is only paying attention to the .gba.sav. i suggest that you format your msd, reinstall akaio and try agian. i had an issue with gba stuff failing thanks to dsorganize. it was odd that EVERYTHING worked perfectly except for gba stuff. format and reloading of the firmware solved my issue.

when smiths added the 3in1 support he tried to come up with every possible senerio that a user could load a rom/sav. he tested it so you know it works.

let me also add that i have been using the native 3in1 support since smith revamped it. it works perfectly for me. it should do the same for you. there is no difference from ak-to-ak or msd-to-msd. it's something else that you are doing.

-another world

 

[gotchaff]

I don't really know what I was doing wrong before, but using GBA ExpLoader fixed all my problems, which is fine for me hahaha.

I've tried reformatting and putting on clean copies of AKAIO countless times, but nothing worked. Still no clue what I was doing wrong. >_>

 

[|Tch0rT&#12]

I can't get GBA ExpLoader to work. It just freezes at Initialize...

Ryan

 

[Another World]

I can't get GBA ExpLoader to work. It just freezes at Initialize...

Ryan

it sounds like you need to reformat your msd and start over.

-another world

 

[|Tch0rT&#12]

it sounds like you need to reformat your msd and start over.

-another world

I reformatted with the Panasonic SDformatter. I did the full reformat. ReD/L'd AKAIO 1.4.1 Proper and put everything back on the card. Same exact problems (GBA games won't save and GBA ExpLoader still gets stuck). I guess I'd better check the battery...

Ryan

 

[Smiths]

i've found Exploader to be the end all of "do i have a crap 3in1"

If it's messing up in AKAIO, try ExpLoader. if it works in Exploader, then perhaps something's odd with AK's code.

It's just really hard to factor in every combo

you've got load from slot2 in main list, load from shortcut in main list, load from file in a directory.
then you've got the options of PSRAM or flash to NOR
then you got the options of "is it the same rom as before or a new rom"
then you've got to factor in some people bring their 3in1 to another person and that person may not have the saves but the rom is in the NOR. so it has to avoid loading any save but still want to try to back up the save (which I don't think it does; you'll have to go to 3in1 options and just manually dump sram)

The NOR part complicates matters a lot since that has to go by header comparing.

it's a tricky beast, as you can tell.

 

[gotchaff]

Your post got me thinking, Smiths, because I share the 3-in-1 with my brother. I couldn't get the saving in Mother 3 to work until I loaded my save to the SRAM; he already had a save for the Minish Cap on there. Maybe that was causing things not to work when I tried to do it through AKAIO? Is there anyway to blank the SRAM and test this?

Did anything I say even make sense? I don't really have a full understanding of this, haha. >_>

 

[Smiths]

depending on how he loaded minish cap (on his own DS?) then yep
could very well be the cause.

 

[Another World]

so this senerios is that

1) brother flashes and plays minish cap, save is in sram
2) other brother puts 3in1 in his ds, akaio backs-up, save is made on msd (regardless of the fact that the game is not there, so the save is basically useless for him).
---then flashes over mother3 and loads the save

shouldn't that save just overwrite the minish cap save thats in sram? i'm confused how swaping the 3in1 to a different ds makes a difference.

-another world

 

[gotchaff]

depending on how he loaded minish cap (on his own DS?) then yep
could very well be the cause.

Yeah he has his own DS. He has an R4 so he has to use ExpLoader, so he loaded his Minish Cap save onto the SRAM using it.

 

[Another World]

smiths are you adding a different header or something to the save file so its recognized by akaio? i don't get why a sram save would fail to be overwritten. akaio should in theory flash the new game, and pull the matching save from the msd, and then put that save in sram - overwriting whats already there. also isn't the minish cap small enough for psram? don't psram and nor have a different section of the sram bank for saving?

no one quote me on any of that =P

-another world

 

[gotchaff]

smiths are you adding a different header or something to the save file so its recognized by akaio? i don't get why a sram save would fail to be overwritten. akaio should in theory flash the new game, and pull the matching save from the msd, and then put that save in sram - overwriting whats already there. also isn't the minish cap small enough for psram? don't psram and nor have a different section of the sram bank for saving?

no one quote me on any of that =P

-another world

It is small enough for PSRAM but he flashed it to NOR for unknown reasons.

 

[Another World]

ok but still, based on how it makes sense to me, why should the akaio 3in1 support care what save is sram. when you flash a new game to nor, the old game is overwritten and a new save is created for that new game. you should essentially be overwriting the old save with each flash, shouldn't you? regardless of what ds you flashed the nor from, the mechanics should remain the same. it wouldn't make sense to leave the old save as it wouldn't be associated with the new game. i flash stuff back and forth to nor all the time and never had this issue. =/

-another world

 

[Smiths]

i dunno
i don't support multiple users.

 

[Another World]

Kirby

 

[Briankealing]

That was one of the most randomest posts I have ever seen.

I just got a 3 in 1 about a week ago (it still hasn't shipped).

If I have 2 gba games, play one for about five mins, save, and then play the other one for five mins, save - will playing the first game again load from the 5 mins save...?

I'm really confused on this flash - one - at - a - time thing.

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

That was one of the most randomest posts I have ever seen.

I just got a 3 in 1 about a week ago (it still hasn't shipped).

If I have 2 gba games, play one for about five mins, save, and then play the other one for five mins, save - will playing the first game again load from the 5 mins save...?

I'm really confused on this flash - one - at - a - time thing.

If you don't mess with AKAIO configuration and don't forget to save/load the sram data, yes, you will load the 5 mins save from first game.

 

[Another World]

you have to flash to psram each time you want to use it, as it doesn't store whats there. so if you flash 1 psram game, turn off the ds, that psram game is no longer there. to play that same game again, or another, you need to flash it over again. if you flash to nor the game will stay. its because nor is non-voltile and won't erase itself. it also takes much longer to flash to nor. the nor uses the battery. the sram (as rudolphs tools readme states) has two sections. one for the psram and one for nor. when you flash any game to psram or nor without backing up the save you will lose it, as a new save is created for that newly flashed game. this is why akaio has built in prompting to back up your saves on bootup. for more information check the "links" section of the akaio wiki. i put in a link to the 3in1 wiki.

so anyways,
you play a game for 5min, save it and turn off the ds.
you then turn on the ds, and flash the same game to psram again (to play it again.)
if you didn't back up the save, the 3in1 assumes thats a fresh flash (as does akaio) and the save in sram associated with the psram game is overwritten.

you play a game in nor for 5min and save, then turn off the ds.
turn it back on, that nor game remains as does the save because its stored by the 3volt battery.
the next time you flash a game larger than 16mb to nor it will overwrite that save.
now flash the original game back to nor, if you didn't back up the save you can't reload it. as whats sitting in the sram for nor is for the 2nd game.

does that make sense?

-another world