Hi I am trying to play final fantasy 1&2 advance on the DS but when I quit and go back to playing later my save games are not there. What am I doing wrong. I'm using a M3 lite perfect. I have tried A+B+L+R and selected save and tried to load the same way. I am playing these in GBA mode and not DS mode. If I try to play in DS mode the screen goes blank before I get to play anything. So when I boot up the system it goes into DS mode and I click Start to reboot into GBA mode. While in GBA mode if I click start on the rom to play, the game opens just fine and I can play (with out being able to save). But if I click A I get "Warning! Card has not been Formated. Please shut down and insert a formated Secure Digital Card. Or Press START to continue anyway." My SD card is 2 GB and is formated FAT.
It sounds like you don't have a .sav file for the game, I may be wrong, but if that is the problem get "GBA.DAT" from the Gamemanager install folder and copy it to your card in a folder labeled "gamesave" then rename it to whatever the name of the game file is, for example, if your game file is "ind-fdos.gba" then gba.dat needs to be renamed ind-fdos.dat. Hope this helps, sorry if not.
I do have the GAMESAVE Directory and .DAT file. Also when I try to play the game in DS mode I get a DS gamesave directory not found (I don't remember exactly what the file name was).
Do you have the latest firmware and Gamemanager? If not, get it here http://m3adapter.com/Download.htm and repatch the rom or replace the current one with an unpatched one. If that doesn't work, try reformatting your card and start over. It's been a long time since I last had a problem with my M3, so I'm kind of rusty in troubleshooting it, sorry if this doesn't help. Oh, and seeing as it's a GBA game you're going to want to boot it in GBA mode, don't worry about the NDS thing.
I do have a .DAT file for the game but how to I get a .SAV file? Can you post step by step on how to get a GBA game with saves on to the M3 lite v34?
The M3 lite doesn't use .sav format for GBA games, I typed that accidentally. Anyways, start off by reformatting your card, FAT or FAT32 I haven't found a problem with either, then place "Updagcsd.e34" in the card and run the M3 with it, it will prompt you with a screen reading "Find update file UPDAGCSD.e34. Press START to update or A to to cancel." then wait for it to update. When it's done, put the card back in the computer and delete the update file, then run the Gamemanager of the same version (V34a) and patch the game anywhere you want it on the card by clicking on the drive letter on the left screen and selecting the desired directory within it. Heres a screenshot: Then click "Write GBA" and select the rom file. However, I've found patching the rom through Gamemanger causes numerous graphical errors, so replace the patched rom file with the original, make sure it has the same name as the patched rom, as the Gamemanager created a .dat save with the same file name, if the name doesn't match then it won't save. And that's pretty much it, hope this helps you...
in the game manager should I check real time save? and what does soft patch, hardware support 1 and 2 mean?
It just depends on weather or not you want to use it, however, as I've said before that can cause multiple graphical errors. As for soft patch etc. I don't remember, just keep it on the default.
