MANAGE SAVES

 GENERAL INFOS

One of the best things that Pogoshell can do is manage savestates in a very simple way.
In fact with PS you don't need to backup your save everytime you change games on your flash, the saves will simply stay there on your cart, ready to use when the saved game is flashed again!

How does this work?

Your Flashcart has 4 memory banks (each 64kb for a total of 256kb) called SRAM and it's there where the saves are kept.
Normally a GBA save uses a whole 64kb bank... but not with Pogoshell! After the use, savefiles are packed in very small files (sized ~1-5kb) and placed in banks 1,2,3. When the game is in need of a certain savefile , Pogoshell "unpacks" it in the bank 0 so that i'ts ready to use.
So we will have the 64kb savefile in bank 0 and other packed savefiles in banks 1,2,3. We have a total of 192kb for our packed saves!!! Thats a lot, our GBA can carry over 100 saves from different games!

 HOW DO I EXPORT A SAVE FROM GBA TO MY PC?

If you need to extract a particular save from your GBA ( for example if you want to play it with Visualboy Advance) you must follow this procedure:

1) Start the game you want to extract the save from.
2) When the game is loaded TURN OFF THE GBA (yes actually turn the power off)
3) Extract the first bank of SRAM with your favourite Flashing program. For example with Flash 2 advance Writer start the GBA in multi-boot mode ( SELECT+START) plug in the f2a cable and press on Backup Saver and set the options as below:

you will get a .sav file usable with Visualboy Advance or your GBA cart.

IMPORTANT: Not every game have a 64k size save... so, you cannot extract the save every time selecting size 64k.
The general rule is:
SRAM SAVES----->64k
FLASH SAVES---->64k
EEPROM SAVES-->512 Bytes, sometimes 8K

If you play a game with an EEPROM save it may happen that pogoshell can manage to save and load, BUT you will never be able to dump the save off the cart!
In fact you can see that there's no 512byte extract save option.

I SUGGEST YOU TO SRAM PATCH EVERY GAME THAT HAVE EEPROM SAVE OR YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO EXTRACT THE SAVES FROM THE CART.

 HOW DO I IMPORT A SAVE FROM MY PC TO GBA

This is even easier!
All you need is the .SAV file. If you want to import a Visualboy Advance savefile keep in mind that Pogoshell does not work with .SGM files but only with .SAV, to get a .SAV file from a game simply load the game and press:  FILE>EXPORT>BATTERY FILE...

What do you have to do with the save file? Place it into the Pogoshell Directory root/.saves before executing the create.bat, BUT BEWARE, the name of the save file must MATCH EXACTLY the name of the rom you put in the root!
For example if you want to import the savefile from Tony Hawk 4.gba the save in root/.saves MUST be called Tony Hawk 4.sav , not Tony Hawk's 4.sav or such... the name must be the SAME.

There's another thing you need to know. Pogoshell checks if there's a savefile with the same name in the SRAM before loading the one in the root/.saves . So it will not load the save you uploaded UNTIL you remove all the savefile with matching name from the SRAM.
To do this enter SRAM VIEW MODE by pressing START on your GBA, then select the file you want to delete and press RIGHT+LEFT+A simultaneously you will not get any confirmation messages, so use this delete option CAREFULLY. Now simply load the game and Pogoshell will use the save you uploaded.

 HOW DO I IMPORT A SAVE FROM MY PC TO GBA ALTERNATIVE METHOD

You can upload saves directly from your pc to the GBA without flashing the cart again.
Start the game you want to upload the save from Pogoshell. Turn it off.
Turn on the Gba and start multiboot (SELECT+START) plug in the cable and run the flashing program.
Now click on "Write Saver" and upload the save you want TO THE FIRST BANK selecting the correct size. Turn on the Gba again and start the game, the save will be there. 
 

 HOW DO I EXPORT ALL MY SAVES FROM THE GBA?

Extract the whole SRAM by setting 256K in SIZE SELECT.
To import the whole SRAM again, simply use the WRITE SAVER option selecting 256K again.

 IT'S POSSIBLE TO LOSE ALL SAVES... READ CAREFULLY!!!!

If you try to flash your cart with the normal multi-boot mode WITHOUT USING POGOSHELL you may lose all your saves! The games you flashed will OVERWRITE the banks where all packed Pogoshell Saves are put... thus deleting all the SRAM!!!
SO IF YOU ARE GOING TO FLASH WITH NORMAL MULTIBOOT BACKUP ALL THE SRAM!!!
You have been warned:)