Hacking 3 in 1 Assistance.

[Ech0]

So I just got my EZ Flash 3 in 1 in the mail, got all excited to play Golden Sun on a handheld, and it doesn't work. I read all over the internet for solutions. Found a few, they didn't work for me. I have a Golden Sun and Golden Sun 2 .sav file on my computer, from playing on a VBA emulator. I tried using those saves on the 3 in 1 but to no avail. I have GBATA, and I patched the ROMs. So I load up Golden Sun, and after some renaming of the save files and stuff I got it to detect my Golden Sun save, but my Golden Sun 2 save wasn't being detected. Then I put the original back on NOR, overwriting the second. Now that save file was gone, or at least not being detected. What am I doing wrong? Should I be "backing up SRAM to SAV" and vice-versa after every load of a different game or what? And how do I make the 3 in 1 detect and load my Golden Sun 2 save? I'm using an R4 and Rudolph's loader, v1.9 by the way.

 

[Jademalo]

ok. heres how it works.

NOR is permanant, psram isnt.

The save on the Psram is different to NOR.

The tool automatically backs up the save in the memory, loads the save for the gzame that is being used, and then loads the game.

if you load a game onto psram, play it for 2 hours, then load the same game onto NOR, you will have the old save on nor.

Here is where you wiuld need to back up the PSRAM save, an d then reload or restore the save on NOR>


Hope this helps

 

[Ech0]

So I don't have to backup PSRAM at all if I'm only using NOR? That makes sense. The other problem is, I haven't used PSRAM at all, but my Golden Sun 2 save has never been detected. How would I be able to use it? It's a 64k save, but I already patched the ROM with GBATA.

 

[myuusmeow]

You need to pad it to 128kB. To do this:
1. Download XVI32. (It's just a hex editor)
2. Use it to open your save file. Click the last byte of the file. (Go all the way to the bottom, and click the last little box that has stuff in it)
3. Edit->Insert String
4. Click the radio button by Hex String
5. In the box below Hex String, type in 00
6. Click the radio button by decimal
7. In the box below hexadecimal, type in 65536
8. Press OK and then save your save.

What that does is add 00 (Which takes up 1 byte) 65536 times (Which would add 64kB exactly) and makes your save 128kB, because Rudolph's Tool will only use 128kB saves.

 

[Grimalkin]

Interesting, shouldn't Golden Sun II be able to use PSRAM? Cause that's much simpler.

Also, If you have a save for Rudolphs tool, make sure you rename it to the right name in all caps. Then restore SRAM from file. (Make sure you don't have a SRAM.bin). It'll say: or something similar to that.

It'll automatically detect the save and pad it to 128k. It doens't matter if it's 8k, or 64k it'll automatically pad it.

 

[Ech0]

Thanks for the replies! I used my hex editor to increase the file size to 128k, and that works all fine and dandy.

Now I have a new problem. After I got the Golden Sun games to work, I tried it with Pokemon FireRed. It detected the save (I guess), but it was corrupted, so it loaded the previous save (which I made to get the native ROM name for my VBA save). Any ideas on how to fix that? I used Gbata on this ROM too, FYI.

EDIT:

I found this while searching the forum.

If you want to play a GBA pokemon game and link it with a DS pokemon game, you will need to patch it with the EZ4 Client and flash the game to NOR. If you just want to play the GBA game without DS linkage, you can patch it with GBATA and run it in PSRAM mode.

I assume there's truth to this, and with that said, what exactly do I have to do to have connectivity? As far as I know, All I have to do is patch the GBA game with the EZ4 client, and patch the DS game with Pokepatch or whatever it's called. Anything else I have to do? And after I patch my DS ROM, will my save still work? I don't know much about patching the ROMs, but if it makes things easier, I could care less about PSRAM compatibility - I only plan on using NOR.

EDIT 2:

I figured it out after messing with it a little bit. Now all my (ez flash) problems are solved. Thanks again for all your help everyone!