no memory card

[Bluerose5]

Hello I am new to Dolphin.   I'm wondering how to activate the memory card in Dolphin Emulator, as every game I load says there is no memory card present.   I have navigated to this folder:

/home/user/.dolphin-emu/GC

and see the various memory card files including Eur, Japan, and 2 USA mem cards. I have checked the permissions, and all files are able to read and write ... I also  backed up the memory card files,and then deleted them from the /home/user/.dolphin-emu/GC dir. I now see 2 new to USA  memory save files( A and B) in this dir, but still it says i can not save/.

in Options-->Preferences-->Gamecube tab--->Device settings I have enabled GCI Folder for both A & B slots with no change . Still cant save .

What am I missing here?

running Dolphin 5.0-RC-34 on Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit

[Craftyawesome]

Config, gamecube, slot a, gci folder

[Bluerose5]

Config, gamecube, slot a, gci folder

EDIT - something good did happen. At some point it said the memory card did not have system data on it would you like to do this now, so I put yes. I've been loaded a save I had made before I had memory slots and tried to save on a memory slot and it still says it was no go mem card... but I know why

if I load a new game it does recognize that I have a card which is good news, but if I load old save States before the memory card was configured it still will not recognize it. So I had to start the game over and make sure that all my save states were activated when the memory card was present

thanks for your help