I really appreciate your time helping me here.
Tried to restore with that file and unfortunately, I get prompted to format the memory card. It still works with F-Zero in Dolphin. (Though, you probably already knew that) Perhaps this F-Zero file cannot write properly to the real memory card because of its anti-copying protection?
I don't think I have ever edited the card with the Dolphin memory card manager. I may have opened it with the editor at some point, but I would have had no reason to try to edit it until now.
Thanks again,
-MD
I don't know how Dolphin and ctr-gcs manage the Memory Card files, but I had a look at the corrupted one. I didn't find any Pokemon XD save, but I found 3 F-ZERO filesd which I tried extracting and adding to the clean .raw file in Dolphin. I can't test it because I haven't got the game, but it might be worth trying:
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attachment=7349]
f-zero/pokemon xd are protected saves which only work on the original memorycard (serialnum/flashid)
if you extracted the saves with the memorycard manager included with dolphin the saves are not correct, see my last post in this thread
I have put some work into properly handling of fragmented memory cards such as this, but it is not part of dolphin yet, only in my memorycard manager repository on googlecode
I tried to defrag the files first, but I have no way of knowing if it worked. I added the saves to the original clean .raw (with Dolphin) to avoid problems with the flashid, but I don't really understand what SRam.raw is for. Is the flashid the first 12 bytes of the Memory Card image?
no, the flashid is part of the physical memorycard, but not part of the data stored by it
sram stores the flashid of the current inserted memorycard, it is used to unlock the memorycard by calculating the serial number of the memorycard (first 12 bytes of the image)
even by exporting and reimporting an f-zero save to the same memorycard causes fzero to reject the save (at least from the various tests I have done)
When messing with this yesterday, I tried to continue what you started, LPFaint99 and got the memory dump down to just the 4-block F-Zero game data. (Easily the most important thing on the card; the other two F-Zero files are garage and emblem data, which can easily be remade and all but 3 other save files are now accounted for on another card)
It read fine in F-Zero GX in Dolphin and when looked at in my Dolphin system menu it showed just the one file and 247 blocks free, which makes sense. It even looked good in Dolphin's memory card manager and yet when restored it didn't work.
I then took a copy of that same file and opened it in F-ZeroGX in dolphin and forced the game to save. (Since I hadn't saved the game since I removed all the other memory card saves) I noticed this makes it look screwy in Dolphin's memory card manager, but it will be the next thing I try when CTR-GCS reads my official memory card again. (Which seems to be only about 5% of the time, following DacoTaco's workaround exactly. I don't know if this is my system menu, (4.3) model of Wii or something else)
I'll also mention that I tried these AR codes to use Dolphin's system menu to copy the F-Zero save to a blank, reformatted dump of its original card. The first code does in fact make the save copyable, but the second one does not seem to work in making it valid on the new card/RAW file. (
http://board.gscentral.org/retro-hacking/53093.htm)
I'll attach my last two attempts and another blank dump of the official card. Though, I'm pretty much out of ideas with my limited knowledge of memory cards and starting to think until more progress is made on LPFaint99's front or a new method of copying RAW files to GC memory cards is made with a new libogc that supports official GC cards in Wii mode, I'm stuck.
Thanks again,
-MD
(02-08-2012, 03:14 AM)LPFaint99 Wrote: [ -> ]f-zero/pokemon xd are protected saves which only work on the original memorycard (serialnum/flashid)
Well, I still don't know about F-Zero but I've just got Pokémon XD and I after resetting the move/copy permission bits once I am able to copy the save to another Memory Card and it still loads in the game. I guess it isn't looking for the flashid if the permissions don't tell it to.
That's pretty interesting. Unfortunately for me, I found out that the program I was using always corrupts when restoring to official cards, but if I could get the save to copy to a dump of my unofficial card, it should restore fine and work on the real GC.
So would it be possible to reset the permissions on the save file, copy it to a new memory card and then copy from that new card to a third and have it still work? (If I wanted it back on the official card, I'd have to copy it from the official dump to the unofficial dump, restore the unofficial dump and then copy it back to the real official, reformatted card)
Also, when the game saves progress on the new card, does it become copy protected again and continue to work?
-MD
(02-21-2012, 07:45 AM)MountainDrew Wrote: [ -> ]Also, when the game saves progress on the new card, does it become copy protected again and continue to work?
The saves do not become copy protected again when saving game progress.
I am away from home atm so I haven't got round to trying out the homebrew utility for making dumps of memory cards, but I have saved Pokémon XD to an EMD USB Memory Card adapter to save and edit the permissions, then copied the save to an official Memory Card and carried on playing from that (occasionally copying saves back to the unofficial card).
This also works for Homeland which is copy/move protected.
How are you editing the save files? I do not know much about memory card data or hex editing, but if it is something I could learn to do, I'd like to try it on my F-Zero and Pokemon XD data. If it is easier to do than explain, could I send you my saves? (I could upload them as .gci or .RAW and give you another .RAW dump of an unofficial card to copy them to) Then I could test to see if they dump and copy to official cards properly.
Much appreciated,
-MD