Savegames randomly stop working.

[Harrumph]

In the SNES thread on autosaving, there was a suggestion of Mister creating a backup of save game files automatically. I think that would be a good idea in general, but certainly as a stop-gap measure until this issue is tracked down and fixed.
E.g. every time SRAM is comitted to SD card for saving, the previous save file (if existing) gets renamed to gamename_old.suffix before the new save file is written.

[BamaMatt]

If the system displayed text notifying you when save is in progress and when it's complete I think everyone could have peace of mind that their save is intact.

[Johnny Love]

I found an issue with autosave where it will write a blank save during rom loading. This only happens if there is already a game with saves running and it writes to save ram just before the new rom starts loading.

I have sent a pull request for the SNES core but it probably also affects other cores like Genesis and Turbografx16.

Unfortunately this issue is still here. Open OSD, pick the same ROM you are running, since it is saving as you do this, the save gets wiped out. It is incredibly easy to reproduce. Just open Super Mario World with some progress, open OSD, load Super Mario World again, all progress is gone.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_Mi ... its/master

This is because the newest release doesn't have paulbnl's latest commit (which, ostensibly, fixes the problem). you would have to download Quartus and compile the latest SNES build yourself and use that to fix the issue.

I compile the latest builds on my own typically when important features come out like this to test. You can take a look here, I've decided to start storing those since I'm bad at keeping track of things locally with no tracking. These are not to be considered official, and they could be highly unstable. Use at your own risk! I haven't tested the SNES core or any others up here, except for the Genesis core (recompiling that now). You have been warned. I'm going to test the cores other than Genesis later tonight, just been wanting to do this very thing a while.

https://github.com/birdybro/lilymistercores

I didn't try your version, but the newest release contains paulbnl's latest commit. I tried the Super Mario World example I gave before and on my first try the save file was wiped out.

[paulbnl]

I have tried loading Super Mario World a few times in a row on the title screen and I can't reproduce it.

[Johnny Love]

I have tried loading Super Mario World a few times in a row on the title screen and I can't reproduce it.

Sorry. by "open Super Mario World with some progress" I meant start the game and resume any of the 3 slots that have the progress. You only have to be on the map. I didn't try it from the title screen, but i'm pretty sure the title screen doesn't trigger a save.

After closer inspection, it turns out that I never mentioned I was using the "Vitor Vilela SA-1 Enhanced v1.32" version of SMW, at least not here. I did mention it on reddit ( https://redd.it/hqy45b ) which might have more useful information other than that.

I tried reproducing it in the standard rom even right after saving at the chocolate ghost house 3 times in a row without triggering the bug. I'm not sure if that proves anything though, because nobody really had a foolproof way that I saw to trigger it even before the patch. The SA-1 enhanced version of SMW triggered it easily before and after the patch, and this isn't an obscure ROM hack by any means. It has been worked on for years, and has no history of losing saves that I know of in emulators or flash carts, so it may be the best way we have for now of reproducing this bug in MiSTer.

[paulbnl]

After closer inspection, it turns out that I never mentioned I was using the "Vitor Vilela SA-1 Enhanced v1.32" version of SMW, at least not here. I did mention it on reddit ( https://redd.it/hqy45b ) which might have more useful information other than that.

I could reproduce it with the SA-1 version. This version uses the save ram as work ram and so the save file is 128KB instead of 2KB on the normal version and it takes a while to write it to sdcard. So if you very quickly load another rom it is still in the process of writing the save to sdcard. If you wait a few seconds then the save is not cleared. The previous SNES core would always clear the save with this game even if you wait a few seconds.

This is more like a main Mister issue. It should show that it is saving on the OSD and block it until it is finished.

[pbsk8]

I am having this issue with Donkey Kong Country

the .sav file is there in the folder, but when I boot the game, I lost a lot of progress. I play again some time, save the game ad then reboot the game with right most button on mister io board, saveis fine.

But If I turn off mister and go back later, the progress is lost in DKC.

[jdeberhart]

I am having this issue with Donkey Kong Country

the .sav file is there in the folder, but when I boot the game, I lost a lot of progress. I play again some time, save the game ad then reboot the game with right most button on mister io board, saveis fine.

But If I turn off mister and go back later, the progress is lost in DKC.

Even when autosave is turned on, you still need to open the menu for the save to be written to the card, otherwise it'll be lost.

[pbsk8]

I deleted the .sav for DKC and I am starting fresh a new gameplay,

I will try now saving in game and then pressing the osd menu button and then pressing the left button to reboot mister and turn it off by pulling the power plug.

I hope this works

[brknglass]

This happened to my Minnish Cap save file for GBA a few months ago. It worked great for months, then it started ignoring the save file for some reason.

[Sarge]

It does sound like files are being randomly corrupted for whatever reason. It's likely not ignoring the save file so much as it's either empty or corrupt, and the game just doesn't know what to do with it. You could open it in a hex editor and see if it's empty, or if some of the information looks malformed compared to a real save.

[brknglass]

It does sound like files are being randomly corrupted for whatever reason. It's likely not ignoring the save file so much as it's either empty or corrupt, and the game just doesn't know what to do with it. You could open it in a hex editor and see if it's empty, or if some of the information looks malformed compared to a real save.

Robert, the GBA core dev did just that for me and said the first several bytes were corrupted.

[Sarge]

Sounds a lot like what used to happen to me back in the day on my GBA flash cart. I used to run PogoShell, and it would randomly corrupt a bit when I ran on the DS. It didn't do it with an actual GBA, though. Very strange indeed. Hopefully this is something that gets sorted out soon; I'd hate to put in a ton of time only to lose my save through no fault of my own.

EDIT: Just noticed that there was an update that displays a "saving" message when autosave is on. Perhaps this will help alleviate some of those issues.