Gaming Revo K101. Problems with loading saved games.

[b4d4]

Waiting for this fix takes ridiculously long. I haven't powered on the device for a long time now, and rather play GBA on software emulators (even on PSP that many like to bash) where I am confident my progress won't be lost. This says much about usefulness of this gadget.

Anyway, if this fix is truly so hard to make, I purpose a workaround. In the file menu, when you highlight the game, you could be given an option to BACKUP or RESTORE the save. BACKUP would for example copy .sav to .sav.bak, and RESTORE would copy sav.bak to .sav. You would then at worst lose your last progress, not tens of hours. True, you can backup/restore like this already with your PC, but it's a hassle.

 

[alexei_gp]

Its shame the revo kteam doesnt update the revo k101 anymore i waste 130 dolars for two broken devices

 

[b4d4]

@alexei_gp: I hear you. I already sold k1 (major problems with keypad) last week to some sucker. Now, I need to find another poor soul who'll buy k101. Still, I wasted money due to customs fee and I can't charge that much for a (little) used device. Though, a small price to pay in order to recognize being the real deal in emulating the GBA.

 

[RAPTR]

I've had my revo for almost a month now, and I always save by exiting to the menu, and then powering off. This works great, however this doesn't work when the device freezes/glitches when exiting to the menu. I've lost my save 3 times in one week, once because of the screen going black when I exited to the menu, and was forced to power off, wiping my save. The other two times occurred when I exited out of the menu, and the message "Directory is empty"was displayed, and I couldn't go into any folder, as if the micro sd was pulled out. I then lost my save after restarting the console.

I waited 5 months for the console to arrive, so hopefully an update that addresses this save issue can make me feel like my time waiting wasn't wasted. I have a Supercard Dstwo, and TempGBA is looking pretty good, so i'll just use that until I'm confident that this great device won't wipe my save occasionally.

 

[relay01]

Hi All,
Man I haven't been on here for a long time...

Anyway after reading some of the responses here, I think I've discovered another work around for the K101 lost save issue that should work with 32MB + games.

Disclaimers:
I have never personally experienced the save issue on my unit that I got less than a week ago.
I've only tested this method on a couple games but the logic seems sound.

Here's what to do:
Another World said something about the Soft Off causing problems and the feature should have been removed. So what you do is circumvent the Soft Reset.
Before turning off your unit dump the save with * + Start.
Then use the hard reset to turn the unit off. ( Or rip out the battery I guess )
Just hook a paperclip or something to your Revo's wriststrap and you can guarantee yourself a reliable save.

From what I can gather, the K101 doesn't dump your save from temporary SRAM to flash memory unless one of three conditions are met. And there must be something in the Soft Off during gameplay subroutine that's not allowing it to transfer the save to card properly. Due to the psuedorandom nature of the problem, I'd say it's a timing issue. The power is removed from the unit before it has the time to properly write the save back to the card, thus corrupting your entire save instead of just losing your progress since the last.

 

[ruilong]

I am back. As the production for Revo K101 is normal, we will pay attention to solve the problem on losing the saving files. Please tell us the exactly name of the games that have this problem on this thread. I had discussed this problem with Maxzhou88 this morning. And he want the name of the games had this problem- it is strange that he did not get this problem- saving files lost. Maybe it happened random? I got this problem but it is not always. So it is hard for them to coy this problem. So leave the name of the games that you got problem here. I will send them to Maxzhou88 to let him testing it. Thanks!

 

[Another World]

I had it happen with The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.

i dumped the save and then powered off. it happened after playing for a few hours, i was pretty far into the start of the game.

-another world

 

[Fluto]

It happened to me with :
Pokemon Emerald
Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

 

[alexei_gp]

i test this games,all from gba:

*Doom
*Doom 2
*Yoshi island
*Castlevania Aria of Sorrow

All of them the saves are erased....and from gbc only i test the super mario and the save erase all the time.

 

[RAPTR]

I lost save data with:

• Megaman Battle Network 2 (happened twice, first on the very first time I opened the game, second quite far into the game)
• Megaman Battle Network 3 (occured once about halfway through the game)

As I said in my previous post, I lost the save when the system glitched- the screen going black when exiting to the menu, etc.
I have not lost my save in any other game, nor have I experienced any other system glitch.

 

[ruilong]

Thanks for following. I looked back all people's reply on losing saving files on GBAtemp. And I had submitted the names of those games which had saving problem to Maxzhou88. He needs time to test these games one by one. Only he repeat this problem that he can solve it.

Will get you back for any news from him.

At the same time, you can suggest us the way to solve this problem.

By the way, I had asked whether he can share the source code for Revo K101. But he did not reply directly. I think this is not possible as these files are important for a factory.

Thanks.

 

[alexei_gp]

Thank you Ruilong i hope will get the fix very soon.About ideas how to resolve it...i dont have any clue im not a programmer but others here in GBATEMP are very skilled here and can help you.

About the Revo K101 Source Code I tell you give to someone wants to update the revo k101 and fix the many errors have the device..im suggesting the community here on GBATEMP but you say Mazxhou dont want share it and do the things alone...Ok i understand the wishes of Maxzhou

 

[ruilong]

Be patient. Maxzhou88 and his team mates will test the games and bring us the news on it.

 

[Gorefield]

It happened with EVERY Gameboy/Gameboy Color game I played (Booting the GBC Zelda games always gives me shivers). Just don't forget to update the emulator please!

 

[relay01]

At the same time, you can suggest us the way to solve this problem.

From my testing, the issue appears to be that the Soft-Off doesn't always have enough time to write the game save before it shuts power off to the unit. So it ends up just writing a corrupted save.

Having no idea what any of the source code looks like:
I would suggest just adding more time for the subroutine to complete before shutting the system off entirely.

You could also perhaps do a verification that the SRAM and the .SAV file are equivalent before initiating a system shutdown.

 

[alexei_gp]

Ruilong any news about the firmware update on the revo k101?

 

[ruilong]

Ruilong any news about the firmware update on the revo k101?

not yet my friend. We kept contacting Maxzhou88 everyday. Now now their team are testing those games that you guys complain the saving files lost.

Will get you back here for any news on this device. Thanks.

 

[Parasite X]

as long as you dump the save file to the micro sd then the software will load saves automatically. there are two ways to do this. the brightness button + start will dump a save. saves will also be dumped when you enter the in-game menu. however, 32mb roms can not access the menu so you'll need to use the first option.


-another world

elggij mght ta kool =)

 

[exangel]

I've just come to this thread because I was curious as to what problems are being reported on this device. I've had my Revo for about 3-4 weeks, I didn't read all that much about it before buying it, I happen to be a flashcart collector and this was the first clone that I was interested in at all. I just decided to wait until they were definitely shipping to make the order.

I have never lost a save file. I play it daily, sometimes a few hours a day. (I like it more than my modded GBA with a GBA SP screen because it's so much lighter weight and the battery is rechargeable.)
However, I did experience this issue described by RAPTR:

...when I exited out of the menu, and the message "Directory is empty"was displayed, and I couldn't go into any folder, as if the micro sd was pulled out. I then lost my save after restarting the console. ...

However, both of the times I experienced the issue RAPTR described, it happened after starting a new game that I had never played before (edit: I'm pretty sure it was Mother 3 & Yggdra Union which are both 32MB games), so I was unaware whether or not save data corruption would've occurred. One of those times it locked up and I had to remove the battery to reset the system. After the second time this happened I was concerned about the MicroSD quality itself (because I'm using the unbranded one that was included in the bundle) so I backed up the whole card and did a full erase format with SD Association formatter and restored my games/saves to it after. I doubt that this was actually a solution, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. For whatever it's worth I haven't experienced a lockup since then and I have added some more games to the MicroSD, I'm just kind of disappointed that I didn't record what games I ran that coincided with this issue now that I've learned this problem has happened to other people (further info at end of post).

I'm a little confused by what is meant by soft-off. I usually just press the power button after saving my game if I'm done playing for a while. (edit: read a few pages back and Soft-off is just what they're calling the shutdown process initiated by pressing the power button as I have been doing.)

I have never had any issue with sleep mode, and I have mine set to sleep after 3 minutes because I get distracted while multitasking all the time. I've put 60+ hours into FFTA with no worries, sleep mode activating countless times over the course of my game; but I did take the precaution to make a backup of my save file last time I added games to my MicroSD.


I'll read deeper into the thread and possibly edit this post later.

For what it's worth I never even knew about the *+Start hotkey until encountering this thread but that's good to know if I start playing any 32MB games. The only 32MB game I've played so far on my Revo is Riviera: The Promised Land, because I could not import any save files from other flashcarts...
For what it's worth, I just launched Riviera again after using *+L to leave Chu Chu Rocket and ran into a problem similar to what I discussed at the beginning of the post.

• --> Not Enough Memory error (pressed A to confirm)
• --> Game Directory is Empty error (pressed A to confirm)
• --> Screen went back to root directory

I then used the power button to Soft-Off the system since I figured the memory error was due to needing a "cold boot".

• --> Power On
• --> Launch Riviera: The Promised Land
• --> Continue (save file is still normal, continue from Skywalk)

I repeated this process twice (Soft-Off, then power on, Launch Riviera -> Continue) without using the *+Start hotkey just to see if I could reproduce the issue with a 32MB game, but there was no problem on my console.
I also proceeded to try to reproduce the save issue in a couple games I had a minimal amount of progress in that others have reported to coincide with experiencing the problem. Zelda - The Minish Cap, Final Fantasy VI (US), Pokemon Emerald (US) -- Could not reproduce the issue following the description of what causes the problem.

The only issues I've experienced were related to trying to load 32MB ROMs from a soft reset (*+L -> Return to File List).

Here's the info about my specific unit that might be helpful to those trying to isolate the problem:

Serial number on back of unit: 00009831
Machine Info from Help menu:
PID - 00620601
PSN - 121227
maxzhou88's gamer version

 

[alexei_gp]

Ruilong any progress about the save issue on the revo k101?

Edit:The website http://www.kteam.ys168.com/kh_login_sm.aspx?dlmc=kteam is down....damn i didnt backup the firmware for the revo k101....