Hacking EZ-Flash 3in1 saves and battery, how to backup and other things.

[machinaea]

So,

I've had some troble hunting down some GBA games as I've recently moved. One of my existing launch period game's running out of it's battery and I've been thinking of getting the 3in1 as it's pretty cheap and buying used games at a high price doesn't profit the devs anymore. I just have some questions about the saving as I'm one of those guys who want to have their saves last years and years if only for nostalgia purpose.

So, put simply the am I right in saying that the working battery is always needed for saving and loading the gba game saves, but the saves itself are automatically loaded and saved onto my wood r4 card? So if my battery runs after maybe a year of use I just replace it and continue as usual without losing any existing save data. I can easily backup the saves by just copying the .sav files to computer?

I'm supposed to use the latest Exploader to load the games to the NOR?

EDIT:
To clarify, I have a DS Lite, original R4 with WoodR4 and want to hassle free gba experience without having to worry about losing saves.

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

So,

I've had some troble hunting down some GBA games as I've recently moved. One of my existing launch period game's running out of it's battery and I've been thinking of getting the 3in1 as it's pretty cheap and buying used games at a high price doesn't profit the devs anymore. I just have some questions about the saving as I'm one of those guys who want to have their saves last years and years if only for nostalgia purpose.

So, put simply the am I right in saying that the working battery is always needed for saving and loading the gba game saves, but the saves itself are automatically loaded and saved onto my wood r4 card? So if my battery runs after maybe a year of use I just replace it and continue as usual without losing any existing save data. I can easily backup the saves by just copying the .sav files to computer? I have several 3in1s that just sit in a box for over a year and the battery still works. Battery will last 2-3 years. Automatic saving is setting you have to turn on, it is not a default. Exceptions are game saves in NOR after the first reboot.

I'm supposed to use the latest Exploader to load the games to the NOR? No, turn on automatic gba save backup. Wood like AKAIO has it's own loader.

EDIT:
To clarify, I have a DS Lite, original R4 with WoodR4 and want to hassle free gba experience without having to worry about losing saves.

Go see the AKAIO wiki for detailed info on changing settings and the like. Also use the 3in1 sticky in the section to make sure you know which 3in1 you got.

 

[machinaea]

Go see the AKAIO wiki for detailed info on changing settings and the like. Also use the 3in1 sticky in the section to make sure you know which 3in1 you got.

Thank you sir!

So altough my 3in1 is on it's way I've enabled the backup save at start for the gba and it works with PSRAM mode as well, right? I've checked that the few games that I'm going to play are all either 8MB or 16MB so it's better to use PSRAM and not necessary to trim the roms? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the saves are stored on the battery powered SRAM and backed up on my SD card inside the R4 every time I start the certain game(it backups the saves per game and not the whole SRAM when I launch the game?) as .sav or similar which can then be transferred/backed to my pc? If so, how do I load the backups from the R4 incase something goes wrong with the SRAM/Battery?

I just re-read your thread, but I didn't quite catch how the different revision of the 3in1 affect me apart from that the EZ5C11 doesn't have rumble/ram capacity with GBAExploader and it might be more prone to failure.

One last thing, I should use the EEPROM patched roms with 3in1, right? Like THPS2 which had this commented:
[quote]Allows game to save to SRAM instead of EEPROM. Useful for owners of backup carts only supporting SRAM. For USA version of the game.[/quote]

Thank you for your time

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

You only need to manually SRAM patch a game if the AKAIO loader or GBA ExpLoader fails at auto-patching the game for you.

 

[machinaea]

Yeah sorry, figured that out just forgot edit it out.