I Have an Idea!

[CaptTrips]

And I am probablly totally wrong.

In the nester 7.1 readme, it is noted MMC5 save states could take up to 240 blocks. A Standard VMU ought to only have 200 blocks.

NesterDC SE emulates most of the MMC5 Koei games flawlessly, but the player should be prepared for one long-sitting game because the SRAM on most Koei games has never worked with emulation:(

So, I was thinking, Schezro (or anyone,) Have you tried to save a Save State of an MMC5 game on a 2x VMU? I have never bought 2x vmus, but I think I might go hunt one down and try this out.

I have noted, certain Koei games will let you make a save state at the Title Screen, but will ultimatly freeze up while saving in a game.

Any ideas?

[tmcw]

I'm not sure that would work, at least with the 2x/4x VMUs/MUs I know about.

Typically they have the memory broken down into 200 block pages, which are switched between using a button on the memory unit. Thus you only ever have 200 blocks to work with at a time.

Of course I may be wrong, and the type of memory unit you're looking for may exist.

[lackofsense]

you are correct sir

[404NotFound]

You'd either have to compress, do a Bleem-like method of reformating the card to utalized the ENTIRE card (around 240 blocks, i think) or span the file across two cards (with a specialized save method, IE put in two save cards and let the file split across the two.)

All seem kinda complex, but the source for NesterDCSE is out there, so if anybody has the nohow it might be a worthwhile feature.

[Sweater Fish]

If the saves really only need to be 240 blocks that shouldn't be a problem.

There has been a utility to expand Nexus memory cards (the ones with PC connectors) to 241 blocks since the cards first came out. Speud's VMU Tool has an option for doing the same thing to any normal VMU as well. All of my VMUs and memory cards banks are 241 blocks, my Nexus cards for years and the rest of my VMUs since VMU tool came out a more than a year ago.

The only reason that VMUs were limited to 200 blocks is because there's a 200 file limit in either the VMU's own file manager or the DC BIOS's VMU file manager (I don't recall which) and Sega didn't want people putting 201 one block saves on a card and screwing things up (which is weird because--aside from one or two homebrew things--there actually aren't any 1 block VMU saves that I know of, even things like the VMU downloads to unlock songs in Samba De Amigo are 2 blocks). So, on most people's cards there's just 20.5KB (41 blocks) going to waste, with 100KB being used for save storage and 7.5 for the ToC and system info, 128KB total.

Whether or not it allows for MMC5 games, people ought to expand their memory cards anyway. Those damned VMUs are so small, you need all the extra space you can get.


...word is bondage...