EZ-Flash USA Forum

So.... this Time I tryied Eeprom, Flash and Sram. Only SRAM worked. I did it with the smallest available Save Size 64 kb, cause I thought, it is so old, it can´t need much for it´s three SaveSlots. I even cut it out with the Savefile, and copied it back again from Computer, and it still worked! Till now.....


I got an Idea. I don´t want to try this without asking. Can I put the EZFlash 4 out while running a game? So I could change the SD Card, and save the Game on the second Card with same Fil Structure?
So I could make Backups "on the Walk". Hmm. I´m scared to damage my EZFlash.

The EZ4 was designed to write the previously made SRAM file to the SD Card upon the next power on. This is normal. Until that happens the Save file will be kept in the battery backed SRAM of the EZ4. It is possible that the battery would die before the next power cycle and you would lose the save data from the session. This should take more than a month of no use.

The EZ4 battery is rechargeable and charges each time the GBA is being used to play games.

It is good practice to do a power cycle routine after each use of the EZ4. Finish playing your game and either press the reset key combo to return to the EZ4 menu or turn the GBA off and back on. The EZ4 will then write the save file from the SRAM to the SD card. after that you can turn off the GBA for real knowing your save file is safe.

So even if the battery goes very bad there should still be enough charge left to hold a save for the 5 seconds it would take to power cycle.

Holding 'L' is absolutely necessary if you are playing certain games with large SRAM files. These can take up to a minute to successfully write to the SD card. Goomba is a good example. EZ4 will always try to write the SRAM to the disk even if you made no changes to any of your save games. In this case it's desirable to skip the file write and move on to playing another game.

This technique also serves as a rudimentary save state of sorts. If you are at a tough spot in a certain game and have only one chance to get it right you may want reset after failure and discard that save by holding 'L' and try again.

One important thing to note about Goomba, pocketnes and other emulators. There are many 'levels' to the concept of a save game. Goomba for example will create a special spot for itself within the GBA's ram to store the save files it would use. These save files are not moved into the GBA SRAM until Goomba enters its menu system.

It sounds complex and takes a while to understand and form a habitual practice for it but it will become second nature.

Here's how it works. Boot up Goomba, choose FFL2. play the game up to the point where you get control on your character and pause the game and choose "save". Goomba has now created a save game file within the GBA RAM. but that will mean nothing if you power off the GBA right now. You'll lose your game. Instead, Press 'L' & 'R' together. Goomba will display its menu. At this point Goomba will transfer that save file from the GBA RAM to the EZ4 SRAM battery backed memory. Now power off you the GBA and power it back on. EZ4 will check to see if it has a file in the SRAM. It will find the Goomba save file and will attempt to write that file to the SAVER folder. If the save file is already there as made by the EZ4Client the ez4 will have a successful write process and you can power off the GBA.

Next time you load goomba ez4 will read that .sav file from the saver folder and load it back into the SRAM. And that's the circle of life.

Goomba also has a save state feature which you can use instead of relying on the built in save feature of a gameboy game.

Don't do that. You know it's wrong and I can confirm that.

Also give goomba the largest save file you can. I doubt it needs a 512 but you'll make it sad with less than 128. What you are failing to realize is that Goomba is not a GB game. It has a lot of data that needs to go into its save file than just 3 slots of one game. It has to save it's own configuration file with you settings preferences, it has to save each and every game you load with your preferences plus whatever sram that particular game had. On top of that Goomba also makes save states and will need room to do that as well. It may work for you today to restrict its save size but i will not help you next week if you lose more progress because of it.

About your idea of backing up "on the walk".

I really don't see it as necessary but this may be possible with the following steps.

Prepare 2 SD cards with Identical SAVER folders. We'll call them SDA and SDB.

You'll use SDA as your primary disk this will be the disk that has all you ROMs on it. SDB does not need to have games on it but it will need to have a .sav for each game located on SDA.

So play a game on SDA and save your progress. Power off and back on or reset and write that save file to the the SAVER folder of SDA. Start up the game again and do something like take 2 steps and save again. Power off this time. Swap SDA with SDB and turn it back on. The ez4 should write the .sav file to the SAVER folder and you should have a backup of your save.

The saves won't be identical and It may be possible to skip the re-saving procedure but I'd need to test it to be positive.

Honestly, I think it's backup overkill. If you could just get in the habit of copying the saver folder to your pc each time you plug the card into your PC you'd be alright.

Hello.

Thanks. That´s a lot stuff. I´m still reading. But here is one important sentence I do not understand "Boot up Goomba..."
How do I do this? I mean, I load a Game, I changed with Goomba, right?

Oh yeah... this I found out yesterday: I have to Exit Goomba, so Savegames are kept.

But this Goomba save State... doesn´t work.

"Also give goomba the largest save file you can. I doubt it needs a 512 but you'll make it sad with less than 128. What you are failing to realize is that Goomba is not a GB game. It has a lot of data that needs to go into its save file than just 3 slots of one game. "


What ever I do, there comes out 32kb anyway...

Mostly true, but the devil is in the details. I'm not sure how much you absolute need a *.sav file in some instances, but personally I'm not willing to risk it. If you don't use the ez4client to patch a game or use one of the other patchers (EZ4-64-2) or one of the various prepatched games/emulators, the ez4 loader will have not try to save anything to the SD card. More precisely, AFAICT, the ez4 loader checks the header when starting a rom and copies details of the save type, size, the appropriate save name, and a checksum of the save to the SRAM (more on the checksum later).



Not quite true, exactly. As far as I can figure the EZ4 writes some sort of checksum to the SRAM. It then uses that checksum to see if a change was made. How Goomba/Pocketnes/etc works with preferences, [near-]instance (emulated) SRAM saves, and possible reordering, it's possible that nothing appears to change and for there to be a change in the SRAM causing a save to the SD card.



If he's using the 32KB supporting of Goomba that's true (that is what Goomba_sav32 is, right?), which it sounds like he is; I hope he's properly copying over the goomba.gba with goomba_sav32.gba in the folder goomba.exe is in. But, more generally, Pocketnes/Goomba/etc use 64KB (aka 512Kbits in EZ4Client) for saves. The trouble with how much to patch and what not is one reason I released a pre-patched goomba.gba, pocketnes.gba, etc (and of course to make the Exit menu option work).

Oh, btw, Goomba preferences are like 48 bytes, GB SRAM is 8KB (so ~8KB if badly compressed), a save state I think is ~48.5KB (so ~48.5KB if badly compressed), and there's a fixed 8KB of GB SRAM used for whatever is the "current" game. So, yeah, worst case scenario, you can't really fit a save state, preferences, and SRAM all in at the same time. But, thankfully I've never seen a game that has that bad of compression in all those attributes. And if you avoid using save states, you have plenty of room for 6 games that have saves. Personally, I just have a separate compilation and 64KB *.sav for each game since space on the SD card is cheap.

Thanks for chiming in, kuwanger. A few details such as the proper data sizes aren't my strong points. In the future I too will be making 64kb saves for goomba.

I'd like to make clear, however, that I was aware of my making certain points seem finite simply because after 3 pages of discussion OP has yet to fully understand certain fundamental points of ez4 operation. I avoided the "gray area" methods in an effort to get him to understand the process without exception.

Thank you. I have no more Problems so far.