Old Gamecube saves no longer work in new Dolphins

[Balcerzak]

I recently updated my linux installation, and my old build of Dolphin was no longer working particularly well, so I decided to update. However, when I did so, my old saves were no longer working.

I took care to transfer both MemoryCardA.JAP.raw and SRAM.raw from the user/GC directories of my old installation to the new installation, but it was to no avail.

So, I decided to do some snooping around and checking various past revisions instead of only the current trunk. My previous Dolphin installation was R 4883. I did some scattershot revision checkouts, and slowly narrowed in on things. The final results of my investigations were that I could successfully transfer my saves all the way up to r6296, however as soon as I got to r6297 I received the message that there's a problem with the memory card in slot A. (My Japanese isn't that great, and I can't make out all of the details, so I'm including the image below.)


I'm currently running Ubuntu 10.4, 64 bit, and I used standard svn checkouts and scons builds for most of my trials, though I did try the cmake version for r6502, which was when I first discovered the problem. The game I'm attempting to play is the JP release of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance. I haven't bothered trying to copy over save states, because I assumed those would fail spectacularly.

At any rate, my conclusion is that something important in the handling of Gamecube memory card data was changed between revisions 6296 and 6297, and I would very much appreciate it if you could look into this and get back to me on whether or not it can be fixed, or whether I should continue to use r6296. If there is any further information or testing I can provide, I would be glad to offer my assistance.

[LPFaint99]

Try this:
first make sure to keep a backup of the original raw file
format a new MemoryCardA.JAP.raw with the game, once it is formatted open the memory card with the save and the new one in the memorycard manager and copy the save from the old card to the new card
test with the new memory card

[Balcerzak]

Thanks. With a bit of tinkering with the Memory Card manager, I managed to solve the issue. I don't know if I did quite what you said, but I Exported the .raw file to a .GCI file from the revision that worked, and then Imported the .GCI file to a .raw file in the latest revision. Booting up the game, everything works smoothly.

[LPFaint99]

yeah that's what I meant

{Background: memory card header has a bit set for progressive scan, r6297 changed progressive scan}