I really wish the standard firmware (or akaio) would check the 3-in-1 at startup and backup the sram save, given the problems that the 3-in-1 seems to have with its sram battery running out. hell, it might even persuade me to use akaio

 

Perhaps I'm asking for too esoteric a scenario...
Basically, I'm going to be trying to run, for instance, Pokemon in the PSRAM, while having Fire Emblem in the NOR, and I'm wondering how AKAIO will handle the SRAM. Because the way I *currently* understand it, if Pokemon is loaded into the PSRAM while something is already in the NOR, then the Pokemon save will overwrite the NOR's SRAM save. As a result, even if the NOR's save was backed up before loading Pokemon, would not the NOR game have problems if it were loaded from the DS menu (after all, the NOR game's save hasn't been sent back to the SRAM).

Unless, of course, each startup after a PSRAM load backs up the SRAM, and restores the save of the game it knows (some sort of text file for the loader) is in the NOR.

If someone knows how this works, could they please let me know - as it could potentially be a problem. Thanks

EDIT: This is of course assuming that Pokemon would work from the PSRAM with a game already in the NOR (this doesn't work on the EZ5+ because of the way they allocate SRAM space...) - it's large save type could pose a problem.

 

Aha! I think I get it now.
Basically, because there are so many esoteric combinations of SRAM pratting, the solution is basically to manage the SRAM yourself, presumably with manual SRAM load/save options which either are or will be in AKAIO. As long as there's a way to send a save to the SRAM as well (without having to send the entire game), I think I could work something out. Now that the site is behaving a little more, I'll give the Wiki a thorough read.

Thanks for that, Smiths. I know that you're one of the guys working on AKAIO, so I very much appreciate the info and the explanations. I know that you can't program for every scenario, and it's good to know that you've tried to work something out. I eagerly await playing around with this, when my Acekard finally does arrive.
Cheers a lot! ^___^

 

Thanks an awful lot guys

The moment I get my AK2 I'll do some serious checking, and if I can devise a reasonable stable way for doing what I'm after, I'll post up what I did here. It might be a while (DealEx ran out of "stock" just hours after I ordered D: , so a few weeks maybe), but I will.

Thanks!

 

So right, hang on; would you be able to send just a save file back to the SRAM so you could continue a game in the NOR (after playing something in the PSRAM) ?

 

Or I could have taken this entire thing the complete wrong way:
The Readme file that comes with GBA_ExpLoader says:
CODE

1. 256Mbit(32MByte) NORfalshÂÂÂÂpage size is 1Mbits(128KB)

2. 128Mbit(16MByte) PSRAMÂÂÂÂpage size is 1Mbits(128KB)

3. 4Mbit(512KByte)ÂÂSRAMÂÂÂÂpage size is 64Kbits(8KB)
Now, with 512KB of SRAM, I would have thought that since the largest save is 128KB, the GBA Loader would allocate portions of the SRAM as needed, in the save-patching routine.
Or maybe, since the SRAM is 4 times larger than the largest save, implement the patching system so that is uses the first 2 megabits for the PSRAM, and the last 2 Megabits for the NOR. Or something. (The EZ5+ did something similar, but because they allocated too much for their "NOR multiROM" feature [which I never liked, and never used], it borked 1 Megabit Save games from working in PSRAM - curse them for only allowing 64KB for the PSRAM! )

Or, at least, that's a thought that just occured to me. And, if it actually did work that way, one would never have any SRAM related problems XD

Please, do scold me if that's silly (it makes sense to me at the moment, I'm sure it's possible to patch a PSRAM/NOR game to use SRAM from some point other than the beginning, and to be able to back that up next bootup), because I'm drifting into unconsciousness. Tiredness can sometimes enlighten, but most often just confuses.

Thanks, and good night.

EDIT: I knew I'd read something like this before. I put a link in as a sort of source. I hope that this could potentially be done with AKAIO, if it hasn't been already in a recent testing build.

 

no idea.
maybe name it the same as the rom you're loading and flash it to nor again after flashing another game to NOR?

 

i always thought the saves were separate. but when i got my 3in1 and began testing it seems they both were using the same slot.

hooray for user-provided documentation. EZ and Acekard should team up to create the "anyone knows how it works?" line of products.