Action Replay Plus freezes in memory manager

Post by **yagang** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:11 pm

I got an Action Replay 4M Plus today. When I go to backup saves from the Saturn to the cart the "Saving to Cartridge Please Wait!" message comes on and the system freezes. I have to turn the power off to exit the screen. When I turn the system back on, the files appear to be on the cart, but if I copy them back to the Saturn they seem to be corrupted.
Example: I created several Nights saves and copy the file to the cart, delete the files from the Saturn, and copy the backup files back to the Saturn. When I start the game the saves are not there.

Has anyone else had this problem? I have not tried the AR+'s other features (cheats, RAM, etc.) yet.

Post by **Pullmyfinger** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:17 am

As far as I remember, unofficial save carts used some sort of compression that corrupted saves on some games. It was usually suggested to save to the saturn and then to the cart

Post by **marurun** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:46 pm

The Action Replay 4M Plus doesn't operate in the same fashion as those carts to which you refer. It may indeed do compression, but what you are thinking of (I think) are the 3rd party carts that let you save directly to the memory card and compress on the fly. The AR 4M+ doesn't let you do direct save.

yagang, sounds like you maybe got a dud cart. Have you tried it in a different Saturn just to be sure? There may be a BIOS conflict with the cart and the Saturn, or any number of other one-off problems.

Post by **thegore** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 2:29 pm

wait....so, the Action Replay thing serves a memory card. I didn't know that. Nights takes up 197 of the 512 in the RAM, so I need some more room...if it works good, will it solve that problem?

Post by **marurun** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 3:05 pm

Yes, if you have an Action Replay 4M+ you can use it as a memory card, but it doesn't have direct save. You'd effectively have to copy your NiGHTS save to the card using it's built-in memory manager and then delete it from the Saturn. And then, when you want to play NiGHTS again you clear up enough save space on the Saturn (by more file copying, most likely) and copy the NiGHTS file back to the Saturn.

It's kludgy, but I think it was probably cheap to implement.

Post by **Mozgus** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 3:09 pm

Its best used as a main backup drive for all your saves. It's also invaluable for when your save battery dies in the Saturn and you lose your saves. Just make periodic backups to the cart.

Post by **yagang** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:25 pm

The other features seem to work. I can play Metal Slug and X-Men vs Street Fighter, so the 1M and 4M RAM and region functions work. I just cannot transfer saves to the cart.

marurun wrote:yagang, sounds like you maybe got a dud cart. Have you tried it in a different Saturn just to be sure? There may be a BIOS conflict with the cart and the Saturn, or any number of other one-off problems.

I do not have another Saturn to try. I will see if I can swap out for another cart.

Post by **ShowDog** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:23 pm

My Action Replay does the same thing, but not every time I use it. Probably about 50% of the time. When it happened to me, it was also with a NiGHTS save so maybe that game has something to do with it. I didn't check if my saves were corrupted, but I do not think they are. I just turned it off and turned it back on and everything seemed to be as it should have.