Hacking I don't understand how to keep my GBA saves permanently.

[Pi3ce0fmind]

I have had my M3 Real DS for quite a while and DS emulation has worked great. It saves fine and I have had no real problems except running The World Ends With You and Metroid Prime Hunters. However on the GBA side I have encountered a save problem. In the beginning saving worked fine. I had it set to Patch and RTS Disabled because I wanted to play the games like they were meant to be played. I played a few games and they saved fine. Now I came back to my DS after a few weeks and all of my GBA saves are gone. The Minish Cap won't even let me create a new game. I have not downloaded anyhting recently so maybe there is a patch out? Any help would be awesome thanks.

 

[g6team]

There could be several reason that the GBA isn't saving properly.

1) Try charging the Gba Expansion plug it in your nds leave it charging.
2) After you exit from a saved GBA game you have to turn your Nds back on and go back to the GBA menu to transfer the saved from the Sdram to the main save.

 

[Pi3ce0fmind]

Well I charged the thing and nothing happened. The problem with method 2 is that I have no saves anymore. Do my saves get erased when I remove the expansion pack? Also I noticed when I opened the GBA file on my comp that there are multiple types of saves for each game. .sav . is0 .0 are what I see for Metroid Zero Mission. Maybe the thing isn't charging correctly because I just charged it and it still won't let me save on The Minish Cap.

Also how do I boot up Gameboy and Gameboy Color games on Sakura? It only shows GBA games.

 

[Densetsu]

Do my saves get erased when I remove the expansion pack?I'm not sure exactly how it works, but my understanding is that when you save on a GBA ROM, that save data remains in RAM (the Slot-2 expansion pack), and the battery keeps it from vanishing while the DS is turned off. Once you remove the expansion pack, you cut off its power source (the charged DS) and the save is lost. That's why you have to turn the DS right back on after shutting off so that the RAM has a chance to offload its save data to flash memory (the MicroSD card in Slot-1). That's just what I figured without even bothering to do any research, so I'm actually talking out of my ass right now. But if I'm wrong someone please correct me so I don't have to remain ignorant about it.

Also I noticed when I opened the GBA file on my comp that there are multiple types of saves for each game. .sav . is0 .0 are what I see for Metroid Zero Mission. Maybe the thing isn't charging correctly because I just charged it and it still won't let me save on The Minish Cap.The .0 file is probably an old save file that you had from using an older version of TouchPod. I'm think that the .sav is the more updated save file. And .is0 isn't a save file at all. It holds information about your settings for that particular ROM (whether you have cheats, RTS or patch/fast load enabled).

QUOTE(Pi3ce0fmind @ Dec 23 2008, 01:49 AM)

Also how do I boot up Gameboy and Gameboy Color games on Sakura? It only shows GBA games.

You need Lameboy or DSBoy. Check this thread.

 

[Pi3ce0fmind]

Yeah I do remember turning it on and off every time I played so that it would say "processing data Keep Power On" at the bottom of the screen. I figured that much out when I was playing Metroid. However I recently came back to find all of my saves erased and The Minish cap saying that all the files were corrupt. I assume the battery is dead because nothing saves at all anymore even after changing the saving process to patch. But why has it not charged yet?

Thanks for the explanation of is0 as I had no idea what that was. Also I tried Lameboy and it works great.

 

[Rob_Threat]

And .is0 isn't a save file at all. It holds information about your settings for that particular ROM (whether you have cheats, RTS or patch/fast load enabled).

QUOTEThanks for the explanation of is0 as I had no idea what that was. Also I tried Lameboy and it works great.

the *.is0 file is the RealTimeSave... it's always been M3's GBA RTS extension... since the Slot-2 days of old

 

[Densetsu]

the *.is0 file is the RealTimeSave... it's always been M3's GBA RTS extension... since the Slot-2 days of old

Thanks for clearing that up

The .is0 file appears in folders containing .nds ROMs as well, but this has been happening even before RTS was available for .nds ROMs. Do they serve the same purpose for NDS?

 

[Rob_Threat]

The .is0 file appears in folders containing .nds ROMs as well, but this has been happening even before RTS was available for .nds ROMs. Do they serve the same purpose for NDS?

Yeah, I noticed that too. It made more sense once RTS for NDS was introduced into the TouchPod OS. It shows that they've had big plans for a while.

It may have also had some relation to soft reset... GBalpha says the features are tied together. Nevertheless, *.is0 files are the basis of RTSaves.

Speaking of TouchPod, that name used to be just for the not-so-great G6/M3 PDA program that debuted in the Slot-2 Perfect era. Kinda funny to see it back as a featured name.

BTW, for now anyway... the *.opt files hold NDS ROM settings

 

[Pi3ce0fmind]

Yep still can't save. I guess the battery really must have died.

 

[Pi3ce0fmind]

Several months later and the issue still hasn't been resolved. I must be unlucky with electronics because I have been having multiple issues recently. Anyways I am not sure I want to drop another $20, but I need to play some GBA games. My iPhone can't be jailbroken and I don't want to play on VBA.

Also is it possible to send GBA save Data from an actual GBA cart like you can with SavSender for NDS games?

 

[lordgoober]

I was having problems with Sakura corrupting my save files quite often and not having some GBA games save period. Once I nuked Sakura and went back to Touchpod several months ago I haven't had any problems with my GBA game saves.

 

[Schizoanalysis]

Just checked mine, yep it has a battery.

You could try changing the battery - there is a guide for the 3in1 -- it should be the same process.

 

[Yohko86]

Maybe you should try a GBA SRAM patcher program. I've seen a lot of old posts floating around about Zelda Minish Cap's save feature not working because it doesn't use SRAM for saving like most GBA games do (it uses 14-bit EEPROM to save I believe). You can use this program here to patch your game and it will hopefully solve your saving problem! I haven't played Minish Cap nor have I used this tool but I read that a lot of people have had good results with it.

So for future reference, if a GBA game doesn't save, it may have to be patched first!