Emulation Problems with Saving/Restoring Battery files

[Aganar]

As soon as I got GBA Backup Tool working on my DS card, I immediately backed up the .sav files for all of my important GBA games. While trying to load them in VBA, however, to use with ROMs (for purposes of playing around, hacking, etc.), I am discovering that only a handful of the ones I actually backed up are working. The rest, when attempting to open them in VBA, just says "Could not open blahblah.SAV".

Here are a list of the games I backed up and then tried in VBA:

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (failed)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (failed)
Final Fantasy I&I: Dawn of Souls (failed)
Fire Emblem (failed)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (failed)
Golden Sun (worked)
Megaman: Battle Network (failed)
Riviera: The Promised Land (failed)
Super Robot Taisen: Original Generations (worked)
Super Robot Taisen: Original Generations 2 (worked)
Tactics Ogre: Knights of Lodis (worked dumping but not restoring)
Warioware (Failed)
Yggdra Union (worked)

At first I thought it just might be ROM compatibility (i.e. maybe I was trying to load a Warioware battery file with a Warioware v.1.1 ROM or something), but I just realized that any game can open any battery file in VBA, provided it's not corrupt (meaning Super Mario Advance could open a Metroid Fusion battery file, but nothing will happen), so that's not it.

Anyone have any idea why most of GBA Backup Tool's backups aren't working in VBA?

EDIT: Fire Emblem worked when I made a full backup of the cartridge, yet just dumping Sacred Stone's save again did not. Go figure.

 

[llmercll]

I think my problem is very similar to yours

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=172898

any help would be great, I'm sure it's something thats a quick fix

 

[llmercll]

someone in my thread said to use a save converter called shiny

anyone know of this?

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

http://gbatemp.net/newgon/?dat=gba

Use G-online or whatever you want offline to look up your game. Then look at the save type.

If your game uses EEPROM, your out of luck, the save dump is always bad. The backup tool doesn't support EEPROM save types.

Dumping the save for FF I&II: Dawn of Souls works for me.


In VBA, make sure your save type is set to automatic. I have the Flash set at 128k on mine. With importing FF I&II, it will spit out an error but the data does gets imported.


With so many bad dumps, try having the game in the DS before turning it on.

 

[DanTheManMS]

I believe EEPINATOR can backup GBA EEPROM save files, though I've heard you have to dump it twice in order for it to work for some reason.

 

[Aganar]

Strange--VBA was set to automatic, yet changing it from Flash 64k to Flash 128k did help on alot of games. Which is good, because it means the problem might be on VBA's end, rather than Backup Tool's (I was tempted to try flashing a downloaded save to a cart then restoring with the game's backed-up data to see if it worked, but I was worried about the risk of losing my data if it was indeed a bad dump).

In either case, I've also discovered that backing up the entire ROM itself seems to have the battery save inherently within the GBA file? VBA has no trouble reading that. In which case, even if it's more time consuming, I might just backup every game I have and stick it in a folder for safe keeping. VBA has the option, if I'm not mistaken, of exporting any given ROM's battery file to a .sav anyway, so at least if I go Physical cart -> GBA Backup Tool -> .gba -> VBA -> .sav, I know it will be VBA-compatible saves.

On a side-note, what will an EEPROM show up as under g-online's "Save type"? All I'm seeing is SRAMs of various sizes.

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

you probably have patched roms set to SRAM when your trying to use a clean dump's save state. It would be best in your case to dump the ROM and use those with the dumped saves you get as well.

EEPROM save types have bits flipped at regular intervals, it is a format of the save state. I am trying to tell you that the backup tool doesn't support dumping save states of the type EEPROM and giving you a source reference to look up so you don't sit there and try to waste 30 minutes trying to figure out how to dump an EEPROM save. And like DanTheManMS said, you will need something else for dumping those saves.

 

[Aganar]

...And I'm trying to ask you where in the source reference a game will be flagged as EEPROM?

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

Seriously, do you even look?

 

[Aganar]

Well gee, let's see what games I was checking:

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (SRAM_V110)
Golden Sun: (FLASH_V123)
Megaman Battle Network (SRAM_V112)
Fire Emblem (SRAM_F_V102)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (SRAM_F_VA1)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (SRAM_F_V102)
Riviera: The Promised Land (SRAM_F_V103)
Wario Ware (SRAM_V112)
Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (FLASH512_V130)
Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2 (FLASH512_V130)
Tactics Ogre: Knights of Lodis (FLASH_V126)

So yes, I have no idea why after trying with ten different games and finding only Flash and SRAM saves, I might have been led to believe that perhaps the EEPROM label was somewhere else, or that I was misreading it. But thank-you for the condescension.

Oh, and Yggdra Union dumped fine. It appears to be an EEPROM.

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

you can edit the ini file and specify the save size if your missing data in the dumps.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I am trying to tell you that the backup tool doesn't support dumping save states of the type EEPROM and giving you a source reference to look up so you don't sit there and try to waste 30 minutes trying to figure out how to dump an EEPROM save. And like DanTheManMS said, you will need something else for dumping those saves.

I've never tried dumping an EEPROM save (not even sure I have any games that use it), however according to the download section's translated release nots for the GBA Backup Tool, support for EEPROM save types was added in version 0.2.

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=3345

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

it is only in the form of a vbs script file to fix any eeprom dumps.

strange, none of my eeprom dumps work unless I use the script.

I'll have to try again then with eeprom dumps.

Last version is 0.21 not the 0.2
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=3581

 

[d4nd0]

not to try and hijack the thread, but i recently backed up my cart of 'The Legend Of Zelda - A Link To The Past' (game and save state) using the GBA backup tool V0.21. The two files were saved to my micro SD as "GBAZELDA_AZLE00.sav" and "GBAZELDA_AZLE00.gba". after backing them up to my pc, i deleted my saved game from the actual cart, then restored it to the cart using the backup tool again. i started up the game from the actual cart and restoring the save had worked fine. however, when i try to load the game from the backed up rom instead it says that the "save data has been corrupted" when i get to the file select screen. why would the rom not be able to recognize the backed up save, yet i can transfer it back and forth all day from the cart to microSD and back and there is no problem? could the save file somehow be converted to be usable with the rom?

 

[d4nd0]

not to try and hijack the thread, but i recently backed up my cart of 'The Legend Of Zelda - A Link To The Past' (game and save state) using the GBA backup tool V0.21. The two files were saved to my micro SD as "GBAZELDA_AZLE00.sav" and "GBAZELDA_AZLE00.gba". after backing them up to my pc, i deleted my saved game from the actual cart, then restored it to the cart using the backup tool again. i started up the game from the actual cart and restoring the save had worked fine. however, when i try to load the game from the backed up rom instead it says that the "save data has been corrupted" when i get to the file select screen. why would the rom not be able to recognize the backed up save, yet i can transfer it back and forth all day from the cart to microSD and back and there is no problem? could the save file somehow be converted to be usable with the rom?

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

Zelda uses EEPROM, you will need to use the eeprom script that came with the backup tool to get it working with the rom.