Hi, wonder if it's possible to use saves from SWC on the SED. SWC save is 33KB. I assume each time SWC save is backed up it copies the whole contents of the save chip to disk. I tried to put this 33KB save file named as the ROM into SED save directory but it doesn't load (in Final Fantasy 6). Am I right to think all I need to do is trim the .srm file down to the correct size for the game (2KB, 8KB, etc., instead of 33KB) and it will work or is there a way I need to concert my SWC saves? Thanks!
Remove the first 512 bytes (the header), then trim if necessary. I don't know anything about the SED so it might handle 32 KiB overdumps for you. If not, generally you can use the first 2/8KiB, but it's possible for a game to access the memory at a mirrored address (which will not be mirrored on the SWC, unless your save happens to be from a SWCDX2 running an image you dumped yourself) so the chunk you want may be offset somewhere into the 32 KiB image.
I'm running a Super Wildcard DX2 (64Mbits) but I didn't dump the ROM image myself. I just tried trimming the .srm to the first 8192 bytes but it fails to load as a save file when I run the corresponding ROM on SED. I'll try removing the first 512bytes and see if it works after that. Incidentally, I don't think the files are 32KiB. When I copied across, the size is 33280bytes, i.e. 32.5KB. I'm guessing you say I need to strip out that first .5KB as it's a header put there by the SWC itself and not the actual save chip, which I assume is 32KB.
OK, now we have the interesting situation where (tried both 1.0 and 1.1 ROMs) with the new 8KB save file with first 512bytes stripped (resulting in file being 32768bytes) then trimming to 8192bytes, instead of what the game usually does by jumping straight from title screen to the intro when you press start, it jumps to the save selection screen, so clearly acknowledges the existence of a used sram (which it doesn't usually do if there's no saves present) but options are New Game, Empty, Empty, Empty. Any ideas?
OK, I did the following things: Started a new game on ZSNES and compared the trim start and end point to my SRAM. It's the same. I also pulled the FF6 ROM parts from my floppy discs, rejoined them, ran it through GoodSNES and it said it was a .fig file of version 1.1, so I converted it in inSNESt to a .smc file. Now copied all to the SED and... again save file exists but is empty (To avoid doubt of whether I'm overwriting my save file again when I load the ROM, I loaded a different game with SRAM, then copied the new ROM and SRAM to the SED, then reloaded it) I also played through the game to the first save point on the SED, loaded a different game so the SRAM was backed up, examined it on my computer and it's trimmed to exactly the same place as the one I trimmed was, and works fine on ZSNES. Very confused now, why isn't the SED reading my trimmed FF save, using the same ROM it was made with and trimmed to the same place?
So you got your trimmed SWC save to work in an emulator but not on the SED? Perhaps it's a Windows file overwrite/SED FAT parsing issue.
A save played on ZSNES copied to the SED flash card (renamed for consistency) works fine. Not sure that it's anything Windows is doing, but this behaviour is all very odd. I tried to work around Windows or the SED caching files with the same names by doing it all again in a different directory on Windows with different file names on PC and SED. Same result, 3 empty files. It seems it knows there's a save file but it's corrupt.
I believe so. It looks exactly like the saves produced in ZSNES and the SED in terms of start and end points, is 8192 bytes long and is an .srm file.
Guessing no one can actually help with this but attached are my three files from this process which I've so far failed to get working. I am playing version 1.1 of US Final Fantasy 3 (verified good). File 1 is the full 33.5KB save file direct from the Super Wildcard, onto a floppy and onto PC. File 2 is the file with the first 512bytes (SWC header) stripped. File 3 is the file with everything at the end removed, stripped down to 8192bytes. If anyone can help with this, I'd appreciate it, also if you're successful and can tell me what you did, it'll hopefully help me with getting other SWC save files working on the SED. I may have gone wrong somewhere obvious. However, the 3rd file looks to be stripped to exactly the same place as an 8KB SRAM created by ZSNES. Thanks.
I don't know what you used to strip the data but it must have been in ASCII mode when you saved because all 00h bytes (null in ASCII) were turned into 20h (space in ASCII). This works: View attachment ff3.srm.zip
Indeed, it does. You, sir, are my hero of the week. What did you use to edit it? I tried Notepad, Notepad++ and HexEdit but all with the same results. Perhaps I opened/saved in the wrong format. Which should it be instead of ASCII? Thank you a million times, you have taught a man to fish.
I use Hex Workshop, but any hex editor should work including HexEdit which looks pretty nice. Notepad or Notepad++ would explain the ASCII conversion since they're text editors (unless you have the poor hex editor plugin for Notepad++) and will either drop or convert the bytes which correspond to unprintable ASCII/unicode/whatever characters. You can edit text files in a text editor, not a good idea to edit binary files
Cool, thanks for the recommendation and your help. Extremely patient when it's easy not to be online.
