Hacking Ez 3-in-1 gba rom saves not backing up?

[UltraMagnus]

so, I have read quite a few threads about the save battery in the ez 3-in-1 dieing, this has got me a little worried, as i just checked and it seems that the saves from kingdom hearts: chain of memories don't seem to be being transferred. (ie, no .sav file for it). now, I find this weird as i have played other gba games using it, but it still keeps its saves.

could it be because I have not played any other games that need to be loaded into NOR memory? (ie, >128k roms)

is the a list anywhere of roms that are >128k in size (ie, need to be loaded into NOR to run) so that I can check?

thanks in advance!

ps: apologies if this post is a little incoherent, I am unsure how to describe this issue exactly

 

[Another World]

ok lets see if what i type makes sense to you =)

the sram is shared on the 3-in-1 for both the psram and nor modes. if you start to play another game what is in sram will be overwritten. this is why there is the ability to dump the sram to a save file. the defult setting of gba exploader will prompt you with each bootup to dump what is in sram out to your slot1 flash kit in the directory stated in the ini file. then when you goto load a rom that has a matching save file by name the homebrew asks you if you want to load the save back into sram.

according to the release dats the save type for 1806 - Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories (U) is sram so you should not need to do any extra patching to get it working.

my suggestings are for you to first delete the save files that are on the slot1 kit, back them up if need be, but get them off of the kit. then play a bit of kingdom hearts as it sits in NOR. save it at some point and turn off your ds. let the ds sit for a minute to make sure the sram will not be power-preserved on next boot. reboot your nds, when prompted (hopefully) dump out the save file to the main slot or one of the numbered slots as prompted by gba exploader. now turn off your nds, check your msd and see if the save file was written (hopefully). turn back on your ds, run a game in psram (because its quicker to flash), and save that game out. turn off the nds and boot it back up after waiting another minute. now when you dump the sram dump it to a different slot. you have now overwritten the sram (again hopefully). goto normode and run kingdom hearts. gba exploader should prompt you to load a save file because one exists, so load the correct save and see if it works.

post back and we can try other things if you have problems.

cheers,
-another world

 

[Trukkle]

I was going to ask a similar question, I'm also running a rom from NOR. Using the akaio firmware's built-in 3-in-1 support it doesn't seem to back up the saves from the 3-in-1 to my GBA games directory automatically, even when using the "gbaAutoSave = 1" option in globalsettings.ini .
Is this normal? Because I'm not going to trust it unless there's some proof it backs up the save without me having to prompt it.

 

[Another World]

http://www.advanscene.com/ under the GBA section shows the rom size. 256mbit is 32MB the max size of a GBA game. i don't know if you can sort by file size, and i couldn't find a better list for you that didn't offer rom downloads as well =/.

from what i've been told the 3-in-1 sram dump built into akaio dumps a useless file designed for debugging. i have to look more into it, but for now give gba exp loader a go. the game patches on v.57 are more up-to-date than akaio's patching.

-another world

 

[Trukkle]

Thanks for the help, was using that on my R4 but hoped the AK's support for it would simplify things.
Fingers crossed I can get my save off the 3-in-1 so I can use it in exploader again

It still thinks I have a drilldozer save in there for some reason.

 

[UltraMagnus]

thanks for your replies.

I actually just tried another 256mb rom (yggdra union), and I now have a .sav file for KH:COM on my microsd. I am using the loader built into the official AK2 firmware.

Is the any way to have it copy the .sav file automatically every time, say the AK2 boots? I was going to ask if "gbaAutoSave" in globalsettings did that, but obviously not.

 

[Another World]

i'm pretty sure the firmware 3-in-1's abilities are limited to loading the rom with correct patches and not for dumping the save files back out. you should join #acekard on the gbatemp irc network. you can ask smiths and normmatt directly as they both idle there.

-another world