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Post by pocketpocket on Dec 13, 2016 3:08:08 GMT
I recently got the 4MB RAM expansion which I have been using for Vampire Savior and King of Fighters '97, but I've run into some issues with using it alongside the Power Memory Cart. I initially had some files get corrupted when switching back over to the Power Memory for the first time after using the 4MB RAM. Not everything was lost, but Sonic Jam and Dracula X got corrupted. I figured this was because I had the system turned on at this time on the BIOS. I had previously had no issues switching the Power Memory cart out while the console was turned on and on the BIOS screen, but I thought something may have come up as a result of switching from RAM expansion to Power Memory. To be safe I decided to copy over most of my saves to the internal battery, format the Power Memory and then copy them back over to the freshly formatted cart. However, after switching back to the 4MB RAM to play King of Fighters again and then switching back to the Power Memory (all cart switching done with the power off), I discovered that now the entire cart has been corrupted and all those saves have been lost. I have taken the Power Memory out of the console plenty of times in the past and have never had anything get corrupted, so it seems strange to me that this suddenly happened the second I started using the 4MB RAM. Is there a link there and swapping between different cartridges can result in things getting screwed up, or is it just coincidence? The memory card I'm using is the Tokimeki Memorial green Power Memory if that makes a difference (don't know if that's a third-party cart by Konami or an official SEGA cart? I know that generally third-party memory cards are more prone to corruption on any system).
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Post by zyrobs on Dec 13, 2016 3:27:49 GMT
It is possible that the card connection was not 100% secure one time when a game did a save, and so the next write ended up writing bogus data that corrupted the filesystem of the cart. Happened to me twice, it was not pretty... I could recover most of my saves, but that's because the first thing I did was to desolder the flash chip on the cart and dumping it for inspection.
Unfortunately if you already formatted the cart, then your data is completely lost. The stuff you copied to the internal memory was likely already corrupt.
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Post by pocketpocket on Dec 13, 2016 6:35:02 GMT
Hmm, there was an instance a while back where I got a corrupted save file, almost certain it wasn't a connection issue but could of caused problems regardless. At one point in Sonic 2 on Sonic Jam I had the game crash at the exact point that I finished a zone. I had no choice but to restart the system, and once I did the save file was gone. I'm guessing this is because the game crashed at the exact point that it would of saved your progress, so it didn't get the chance to write the save properly. I had deleted the corrupted file when that happened, but by the sounds of what you're saying, it could of done more damage? Is it still safe to use this cart after it's been formatted or could it still be a bit dodgy?
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sych
"Living for the fantasy" -NIGHTS INTO DREAMS- The Classic Saturn Gem!!!
Joined: July 2009
Posts: 2,660
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Post by sych on Dec 13, 2016 8:02:18 GMT
Isn't the console suppose to be turned off during Cart change overs? Inserting a cart into the Saturn whilst the machine is turned on sounds a bit risky to me. Is that normal?
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Post by pocketpocket on Dec 13, 2016 8:26:59 GMT
Isn't the console suppose to be turned off during Cart change overs? Inserting a cart into the Saturn whilst the machine is turned on sounds a bit risky to me. Is that normal? I've been turning it off while switching the carts since as mentioned in the first post. My thought process was along the lines of how you could swap out Playstation 2 memory cards while in the system BIOS with no issues, or how the N64 would actually encourage you to switch between the memory card and rumble pack mid-game. I figured as long as a game wasn't running that was accessing the memory card or I wasn't in the Saturn's Memory Management screen it would be safe. Don't know for sure how safe or unsafe that is though and it possibly contributed to the first saves getting corrupted. If you're swapping memory cards then I'd imagine it would be safer, but if you're swapping between the 4MB RAM and the Power Memory then the functionality of the cartridge slot would need to change on the spot accordingly which could cause problems. The second time when I swapped the Power Memory back in while the console was turned off and then the entire cart was corrupted is what concerns me. As I mentioned in the first post, I did copy most of my saves to the system memory, format the cart and then copy them back before this happened. However if Zyrobs' theory that those files were already corrupted is correct then I'd imagine that was the cause.
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Post by zyrobs on Dec 13, 2016 13:33:53 GMT
If you formatted the cart then it should be cleared of any filesystem errors and safe to use again. However I'd clean the pins on it, just in case.
That crash in Sonic Jam may have been due to the game failing to save.
Nowadays I always check whether the memory cart is read fine before starting to play games. Hold l+r during bootup and check the memory manager, if you get junk entries or huge amounts of duplicate entries, the card is not being read fine.
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Post by linkt101 on Dec 13, 2016 15:34:11 GMT
I've had this happen in the past. The most obvious thing to recommend is not to switch carts when the Saturn is powered on. Luckily for me my memory cart was only partially corrupted, and was actually able to mysteriously recover files from it later on. After leaving my Saturn switched off for a while. I've also had the additional problem of having the opening Saturn screen continuously looping as well.
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Post by pocketpocket on Dec 13, 2016 23:13:28 GMT
If you formatted the cart then it should be cleared of any filesystem errors and safe to use again. However I'd clean the pins on it, just in case. That crash in Sonic Jam may have been due to the game failing to save. Nowadays I always check whether the memory cart is read fine before starting to play games. Hold l+r during bootup and check the memory manager, if you get junk entries or huge amounts of duplicate entries, the card is not being read fine. I've already cleaned the pins (weren't too dirty but wanted to be safe) but checking the memory manager before playing should reduce my paranoia of this happening again (don't want this happening when I get deeper into Shining games, Grandia or Sakura Wars). Thanks for the advice everyone! I recall the looping Saturn boot-up screen being an issue with my old Saturn as well. I'm pretty sure that was a laser issue and that it happened when the Saturn wasn't quite able to read the disc and boot it up.
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