Issues with Flash2Advance 256M and DS

SargeSmash · Apr 2, 2007

I asked this question a while back on the pocketheaven forums, but no one seems to know the answer. Maybe someone here does.

I've got a Flash2Advance that I've been using for many years. It's great, but when I got a DS, things went south. Randomly, I tend to lose save games. I've determined that the saves are really only being corrupted by one bit, and as such, games that have some sort of recovery mechanism (like Drill Dozer) work just fine. But anything else, and it decides the save isn't there, and overwrites with the new (blank) save.

Ironically, this behavior does NOT occur on my original GBA, nor does it on my GBPlayer. Everything works swimmingly, whether it's the crappy default menu system or Pogoshell 1.2. I do realize that if you boot Pogoshell, then don't boot a game, turn off, and boot again, you can lose saves, but this isn't the same thing.

Anyone who has an idea what's going on here, please let me know. It's rather annoying, honestly, and I'd love to fix it. It's almost got me considering getting a new GBA flash cart, so if anyone's got any suggestions on that, let me know as well. I've heard the EZFlash carts are pretty good, but I'd like something cheap if I absolutely HAVE to replace my cart.

Anyways, I'd rather have the answer to the first question, since that saves more money in the long run.

Thanks for the help, in any case.

Sarge out.

P.S. The R4 rocks. End of discussion.

-EX- · Apr 2, 2007

The battery wearing out?

SargeSmash · Apr 3, 2007

That just seems kind of weird, given that it's done it ever since I got my DS, which was 2+ years ago, and ONLY does it on the DS.

It's very, very odd.

Dirtie · Apr 4, 2007

A similar thing sometimes happens on my EFA-Linker. I can't remember which way round it goes, but if I save in my GBA then load in my DS, or vice versa (it might happen both ways), for certain games I get a corrupted save.

If I use it in my DS and don't ever swap it out to my GBA it works fine, same thing when I just use it in GBA and not my DS.

I'm actually wondering if it has anything to do with Flashme? My DS is flashed, is yours?

SargeSmash · Apr 5, 2007

No, my DS is not flashed. It's straight up original firmware. That's another reason why I think it's so puzzling, given that the hardware running GBA stuff should be exactly the same.

That's also the reason I got an R4, no flashing necessary. Despite being a computer engineer, my paranoia about breaking my own electronics knows no bounds. Guess it's because I've seen what can go wrong.

Dirtie · Apr 5, 2007

Well there's obviously some oh-so-slight difference in regards to a GBA, and a DS in GBA mode that's causing this. You might need someone well-versed on the technical details to figure out what it is

SargeSmash · Apr 5, 2007

Yeah, I'm pretty much in agreement that there IS a difference, I'm sure it's because the ARM7 running the GBA stuff is clocked at 33 Mhz as opposed to the 16 or so for the GBA. But I'm also relatively certain that it's running in a compatibility mode, which makes me wonder if the clock frequency is slowed. It certainly doesn't help out games such as Advance Guardian Heroes, which makes me think the clock adjusts, or just executes an instruction every two cycles.

But what I find odd, of course, is that other people with the DS and the same flash cart have had no issues. I've only heard of one other person that ran into this, and it might explain why no one really knows what's going on.

I think I'm going to crack out the ol' hex editor, maybe I can figure it out (and learn a little bit in the process). It's not the first time I've had to do it, I had to hex edit a hard drive dump of my Xbox to get it up and running again (long, long story).

What I'm curious about is if there is a way to "reformat" the save memory. I suppose writing in a save file full of FFs would do the trick.