OK, this is possibly the weirdest filesystem behavior I've seen in 30+ years of computer usage. I would really love you filesystem experts to shed some light on this.
I'll keep the story short, but to summarize: I have an Ace3DS+ flashcart. It wouldn't load most newer games, but I didn't want to give up and experimented a bit... After replacing the usrcheat.dat file with the newest available, still no joy; then I trimmed the incompatible ROMs, and they started working. All of them. And here comes the weird part.
I wanted to replace the SD card with another one, so I just copied the files over another card (same FAT32 formatting). It wouldn't work. (The older games would work, the newer ones wouldn't).
I made sure that the firmware on the SD card was the same as the old one. I reinstalled the newer usrcheat.dat file. Nothing.
I realized that I had copied the untrimmed ROMs, so I trimmed them. Nothing.
So I got an older backup on my computer, and I copied over an already-trimmed ROM to the SD. That one worked. So I suspected a corrupt file, or wrong file attributes.
I checked the sha256 checksum on both files (the old backup and the newly trimmed one) and the checksums match exactly.
I checked the attributes and they match. I checked timestamps and they match. I can see absolutely no difference in the files. I also renamed them just "1" and "2" to rule out weird file names. One kept working, and the other kept crashing. Even though the checksum says they're absolutely the same file.
So I deleted the working one, and made a copy of the non-working one, in the same folder (I don't even know why I tried this). Surprise... the original file crashes, the copy that I just made FROM THE CRASHING FILE works perfectly.
So I went ahead and made a copy of all the non working games, on the same SD... without changing anything... And the copies ALL work. I mean, I have many non-working files, and just making a copy of them in the same folder, I get a working copy. Consistently. And the attributes, time stamps, and checksums all match exactly between the non-working originals and the working copies.
I'm absolutely stumped. Those two copies of all those games are ABSOLUTELY the same file, yet one set works and the other doesn't.
(I had also tried moving the non-working files around, to other folders, in case there was some black-list or log or something preventing them from running from their original location.)
I also tried making a copy, then deleting the non-working original, then renaming the copy as the original... and it worked.
Now, it's true that I solved my immediate problem (I have a complete working game set), but I won't be able to sleep until I figure out why two absolutely identical files behave so differently... Any ideas, anyone?
(I tried the file operations and the attribute checks / checksums both on Windows and on Linux, to rule out OS problems).
Thanks,
Cristian
I'll keep the story short, but to summarize: I have an Ace3DS+ flashcart. It wouldn't load most newer games, but I didn't want to give up and experimented a bit... After replacing the usrcheat.dat file with the newest available, still no joy; then I trimmed the incompatible ROMs, and they started working. All of them. And here comes the weird part.
I wanted to replace the SD card with another one, so I just copied the files over another card (same FAT32 formatting). It wouldn't work. (The older games would work, the newer ones wouldn't).
I made sure that the firmware on the SD card was the same as the old one. I reinstalled the newer usrcheat.dat file. Nothing.
I realized that I had copied the untrimmed ROMs, so I trimmed them. Nothing.
So I got an older backup on my computer, and I copied over an already-trimmed ROM to the SD. That one worked. So I suspected a corrupt file, or wrong file attributes.
I checked the sha256 checksum on both files (the old backup and the newly trimmed one) and the checksums match exactly.
I checked the attributes and they match. I checked timestamps and they match. I can see absolutely no difference in the files. I also renamed them just "1" and "2" to rule out weird file names. One kept working, and the other kept crashing. Even though the checksum says they're absolutely the same file.
So I deleted the working one, and made a copy of the non-working one, in the same folder (I don't even know why I tried this). Surprise... the original file crashes, the copy that I just made FROM THE CRASHING FILE works perfectly.
So I went ahead and made a copy of all the non working games, on the same SD... without changing anything... And the copies ALL work. I mean, I have many non-working files, and just making a copy of them in the same folder, I get a working copy. Consistently. And the attributes, time stamps, and checksums all match exactly between the non-working originals and the working copies.
I'm absolutely stumped. Those two copies of all those games are ABSOLUTELY the same file, yet one set works and the other doesn't.
(I had also tried moving the non-working files around, to other folders, in case there was some black-list or log or something preventing them from running from their original location.)
I also tried making a copy, then deleting the non-working original, then renaming the copy as the original... and it worked.
Now, it's true that I solved my immediate problem (I have a complete working game set), but I won't be able to sleep until I figure out why two absolutely identical files behave so differently... Any ideas, anyone?
(I tried the file operations and the attribute checks / checksums both on Windows and on Linux, to rule out OS problems).
Thanks,
Cristian