561 Reply by Bit Shifter

(13 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

In an interesting development, it just happened again. Cart's been working fine today, I stopped playback, shut the Game Boy down, nothing out of the ordinary. Plugged the Smartboy reader into my laptop, launched gbcflsh, put the cartridge into the reader, hit "Read RAM," the program "hiccuped" (as it almost always does every time) and aborted on the first try (displaying a status of "Canceled"). I stopped there, waited for the reader's red light to go off (implying the end of whatever operation it was performing), removed the cartridge, checked it in the Game Boy, and boom, blank LSDJ screen, nothing in the file menu.

So — that sucks. Any ideas what this could imply? Is my reader fucked?

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562 Reply by Bit Shifter

(18 replies, posted in Past Events)

Sharp looking event, sharp looking site!

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563 Reply by Bit Shifter

(13 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Aw dang. Well thanks for taking a look nitro, I really appreciate it.

I can't imagine (in this specific case) that the battery had gotten dislodged even momentarily, I treat this stuff pretty gently, and in this case I had been working on the track, wrapped it up, powered off the Game Boy, removed the cartridge, & placed it into the Smartboy reader ever so tenderly, and then began the backup attempt. In other words there was really no opportunity for the cart to get banged around, even accidentally. But who knows. My experience with Game Boy backup hardware has led me to a growing belief that data loss can be triggered by time of day, day of week, position of the planets, El Niño, whether or not you've missed a spot shaving, etc.

So is it superstitious voodoo nonsense on my part to think that there was some sort of combination of circumstances, hardware-wise, that somehow "zapped" the reader & cartridge?

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564 Reply by Bit Shifter

(13 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

That is such a good idea. I have a couple of ancient ones but both are damaged (pins* got bent up somehow). Going to look into getting new ones.

* or whatever you call the little metal parts that make contact with the bottom edge of the cartridge

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565 Reply by Bit Shifter

(13 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

The first few (corresponding to the aborted "Read RAM" operations) were all zero K, so I'm not optimistic about those. But I'll send the first one that had a proper filesize. Thanks nitro.

Any thoughts though about what factors in the backup process actually stand to alter / disrupt the on-cart data?

edit: posted before I saw your edit. Thanks. I'm always careful to make sure playback is stopped before shutting down, so I think that aspect probably isn't the culprit. But who knows.

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566 Topic by Bit Shifter

(13 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Had a problem this morning with the Smartboy cartridge & reader, in which all my on-cart data was lost. I'm busy enough these days that I sped through the grieving process pretty expediently, and now I just want to know what happened, and how it's possible that on-cart data can be at risk during the backup process. Thought I'd throw this out there in the hopes of getting the informed interpretation of people more technically savvy than myself.

Hardware involved:
  Smartboy cartridge
  Smartboy USB reader/writer
  MacBook Pro laptop running OS 10.6.x

Software involved:
  gbcflsh (or however it's spelled), with settings set up like this: http://i46.tinypic.com/xn8zut.png

I've used this setup dozens of times with no problems. Don't know what was different today. Plugged the reader into the laptop's USB port (the one on the right side, if that matters), reader's green light lit up; plugged the cartridge into the reader, initiated a "read RAM" operation, it aborted a few times (not unusual -- seems to be a known occasional hiccup in the process), finally read the cart "successfully," I checked the resulting .sav file in an emulator, found it blank, redid the process a couple of times with consistent results (blank .sav), decided to check the cart, and voila, an empty instance of LSDJ, no song data at all (empty work RAM, empty file menu).

After screaming "FUCK" a few hundred times, I decided to investigate whether the cart battery was dead. The cart seems to be retaining newly-loaded .sav data now (been about 2 hours), so that suggests the battery can't be totally dead.

So, whatever. Lost data, moving on. At this point though I just want to know WHAT possibly can happen in the process of backing up that stands to actually wipe the on-cart data.

I can accept problems that affect / prohibit getting your cart data onto a computer. But when it turns out that the data on your cartridge is potentially in jeopardy merely by undertaking the act of backing up, then I don't know what the fuck to do.

Any ideas, tech wizards?


edit: for clarity (sort of)

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567 Reply by Bit Shifter

(20 replies, posted in General Discussion)

How do you get rejected for a hostel? Did you do something to wind up on a Hostel Blacklist?

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568 Reply by Bit Shifter

(105 replies, posted in Trading Post)

Yeah, this would really piss me off. Definitely wouldn't be so quick to assume everything's sunshine and roses just because he's giving people freebies of the product he ripped them off with. If this were a DJ mix on a CDR or something, I'd be more inclined to let it go. But you have to go out of your way to get vinyl pressed. It's a lot less casual / convenient of a process.

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569 Reply by Bit Shifter

(105 replies, posted in Trading Post)

!!!!

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570 Reply by Bit Shifter

(41 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Now that's a great idea. Between this and my growing frustration with Android, I'm beginning to think it may be iPhoen Tiem.

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571 Reply by Bit Shifter

(119 replies, posted in Past Events)

Hecks raw

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572 Reply by Bit Shifter

(603 replies, posted in Past Events)

I know you live in the future but not THAT far in the future. The countdown's about 5 days off.

ISN'T IT??? *panics, sprints to calendar to check*

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573 Reply by Bit Shifter

(603 replies, posted in Past Events)

YO! This thing has now ENTERED OUR AIRSPACE -- Blip Festival 2011 NYC hits one month from tonight. First post updated with some pretty amazing lineup additions as well as a fresh-off-the-HD promo video by our friends & heroes 2 Player Productions.

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574 Reply by Bit Shifter

(80 replies, posted in Past Events)

Incidentally Jhonen Vasquez says the awesome, strutting flip-flopped Batman is by Eliza Gauger.

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575 Topic by Bit Shifter

(3 replies, posted in Past Events)

I'm not in the general practice of telling people NOT to go to Blip Festival this year, but I felt compelled to mention that for anyone in the Chicago area on May 20th, the mighty Bokusatsu Shoujo Koubou, a.k.a. B.S.K., a.k.a. 撲殺少女工房, is playing live at HARDCORE SYNERGY @ Anime Central 2011, held at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare.

Facebook event listing here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=202549206445913

B.S.K. is an incredible live show. Make sure to see this if you can't join us in NYC!

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576 Reply by Bit Shifter

(80 replies, posted in Past Events)

OrionOrbit wrote:

Just have to say, this image is fucking amazing. It is cracking my shit UP.

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