It is known that some game have problems with battery backup, and that shut down the power when the game doesn't except it or/and without hold the RESET button may cause some data to be randomly overwritten, causing corrupted save files, and later games needs checksum to make sure not loading corrupted data.
Now :
- Why is it done ? Is it done to the processor getting mad when the voltage decrease when the power goes down ?
- Has any games fixed it by hardware ? I've heard the MMC5 boards have stuff to fix that problem ?
- Does this also happen with MMC3 games ? All MMC1 games seems to show the caution notice to hold the rest button, but all MMC3 games I checked doesn't, and Just Breed (MMC5) still show the message.
- Does this also happen with SNES games ? Dragon Quest 6 is the only SNES game that says to press reset, as far I know. I remember to lose saves of Chrono Trigger, could have it be due to that ?
- Can the software avoid that by doing certain opperation (like disabling SRAM and avoid writing to it after the game is saved ?).
Random things I have read before say the wram /ce and /we can be glitched low as the voltage in the system goes down. Address and data lines will be random so the corruption wont be in the same place. The wram has power from the battery so it will continue to do random writes at every glitch, corrupting the data. The mmc3 and mmc5 can disable writes when not needed, and also probably have some filtering like capacitors on the lines to keep them stable longer. With the mmc1 it might work to disable the wram when its not being used.
Most SNES games have a little battery backed SRAM controller IC that prevents unwanted writes.
I've often wondered about this issue. In my family, we first saw the warning to hold Reset when turning power off in the game Final Fantasy. However, when we followed the instructions and held Reset, we lost the saved data! Thus, we thought it was a translation bug and that holding Reset was intended to erase the data instead of preserving it, so we never held Reset again when cutting the power. We never had any issues with data loss/corruption, and we still don't hold in Reset to this day.
For some reason, my Final Fantasy is exactly the opposite. I never held reset when shutting off the power, and my game was lost, like it said. Then I started holding reset when shutting the power off, and all was fine. Hmm, I've wondered about this too.
That's crazy. I think you did hold bad reset or something, and everything get lost. Then, you never hold reset and by luck you did get nothing wrong.
It is hard to reliably hold reset for a long time, because if you release it a very little little bit it will unrelease, and that can happen when you push power.
Disable writes sound fine, but most games will need SRAM outside of save-related uses, just because the NES has only 2kb of RAM, and that add the half of the SRAM 4kb is very great when devlopping RPG, while keep the other half for actual save data. So the programm wouldn't disable SRAM since it will always need it !
Some games (especially Dragon Quest, but also Destiny of an Emperor) ask the player if he wants to continue playing, and if he answer no, the caution message shows up and the game frezees. The game may disable the SRAM here, but then you don't have to push reset when the game says so and you have to push reset when the game doesn't say to !! That's crazy.
Also, Earthbound (MMC3) still show the caution message, while Final Fantasy III and Kirby's adventure doesn't. Maybe it is just in box/manual and not in game ?
It could be in the box or booklet, but I never knew, because I just bought a FF3j cart for $8, and I'm planning to buy the boxed one for like $25 at the end of may. Yeah, you probably think I'm like the stupidest buyer in the world, and if you do, you are right. I have FF3, the SNES english version, and I just bought FF6j boxed on the SFC because the box looks cool. Yeah, so I'm really rediculous when it comes to buying things. Anyways, I would just always hold reset to shut it off, just to be safe. I don't see the harm in it, but I suppose that is what we are trying to investigate.
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Yeah, so I'm really rediculous when it comes to buying things.
My sister is even worse, buying real katanas at over $200 just to do decoration in her flat, wich is very very stupid.