Hardware M3 CF Adapter Saving

[blueblue]

So here I am, lalala, playing mother 3, getting pretty close to the end. Whoops, suddenly there goes my save forever.

So, thanks to the earthbound community I have downloaded a close-enough replacement save. It is a .sav file for the virtual boy advance. However, I have no idea how to make this work with my ancient adapter.
When I play an nds game, I use a .dat save that goes in the ndssave folder and it writes to that save whenever I turn it on. The gba however....I don't know. There is no kind of save file that it writes to anywhere. However, I started and saved a new game which it is keeping in limbo somewhere.

So, what I would like to know is, how can I get a vba .sav file onto my m3 and get my game to recognize it? Any kind of help would be tremendously appreciated. TREMENDOUSLY

 

[kazumi213]

Check your CF contents, there must be a folder containing your GBA saves. Remember that save files get updated on next M3CF restart after in-game saving.

Assuming the VBA save is working, to use it on the M3CF:

- Launch GameManager
- Browse to the CF folder were you store the Mother 3 ROM
- Right click on the ROM and select "Save Manager" (or something like that).
- On the new window there will be a list displaying all available save files on your CF for Mother 3. Select (click) the one labeled as "Default".
- Click on the "Write Save" button, on the leftmost part of the window.
- Browse for your VBA save and click "Open"
- Wait for the "OK" message, then close GameManager.

Your save should work. If you didn't restart M3CF since your last in-game save, the VBA save will get overwritten and you'll need to start again. So restart your M3CF in GBA mode before trying the above to be sure.

 

[blueblue]

Hmm. When I look in the save manager, there are no save files listed. I can press "create blank", but this gives me a "Create saver fail!" message. I can "create saver", which prompts for a filename, but doesn't seem to do anything. The other read/write buttons have no effect.

Previously, in my m3 settings, autosave was turned off - and so I turned it on. It now writes a .dat file, but it still does not seem to ever read from it - I can swap out different created saves and it just ignores them...

Actually, it appears it only ever wrote a file once. It has stopped doing so.

 

[kazumi213]

Ok, to be sure try the following:

- Restart your M3CF in GBA mode one last time to flush stored save data from memory.
- Delete the Mother 3 ROM from your CF. Be sure you also delete all associated save files (I suggest using Windows Explorer for this)
- From a freshly patched Mother 3 ROM on your PC create 2 additional copies with different names.
- Use GameManager to copy the 3 GBA ROMs to your CF. Use a different save setting for each of them (standard, hardware support 1, and 2). Do not apply any other patch like soft reset or cheats.
- For each of them, a default save MUST exist after transfering completes.
- Follows the steps in the previous post to add the VBA save to each GBA ROM.
- Try loading and saving in each of them to find which one is working properly for you.

 

[blueblue]

My Hero!

I think the problem was that I didn't check for a default save directly after loading the game, and that some of my antics erased it somehow...but! Now I am up and running, all thanks to you!