Minish Cap .sav from VBA to GPSP doesn't work

[Lerxst]

My wife has been playing Minish Cap on VBA for months and made it very far untill GPSP was released.
Since GPSP won't load VBA save states, I transferred and loaded a .sgm save state to VBA on the PC, saved in game as a .SAV (for some reason, VBA on the PSP won't create .SAV files even though I ask it to), and transferred that save back to GPSP.
When I start Zelda, it complains about the "data in file 1 is corrupted". I have been playing Mario vs. Donkey Kong and have done the exact same thing when the little Mario's are unable to jump on the spring, and loading those .SAV's works just fine.

Does anyone know what's wrong?

For the record, Mario & Luigi - Superstar Saga .SAV files doesn't turn up at all in GPSP after I've done the same thing.

[Adiuvo]

You need to use the same BIOS you used for each save.

[RunawayPrisoner]

Provided VBA doesn't need a BIOS to begin with, it's going to be troublesome transferring game saves between them.

[Lerxst]

Originally Posted by RunawayPrisoner

Provided VBA doesn't need a BIOS to begin with, it's going to be troublesome transferring game saves between them.

Exactly. Using the BIOS, VBA tells me the ROM doesn't use a BIOS.
However I patched the ROM using GBATA, and while I was able to load the .SAV in GPSP, all game progress in the saved slot was lost. Loading it made Minish Cap start from the very beginning with the intro and all.

However I have a theory and a couple of things to try when I get home:

First of all, it seems like I when I tried getting it running from VBA (PSP) to GPSP, I accidentally overwrote the original .SAV with a .SAV written in GPSP. This can explain why VBA (PSP) didn't write anything to the save slots and why all progress on GPSP was lost (as well as the PC VBA gave errors upon saving ngame). After all my wife just uses the save states so she never saves ingame anyways.

Theoretically, all I should need to do is create a new .SAV with the identical names as those used when we started up Zelda, place that in the VBA (PC) folder, load the save state, save ingame, reset the emulator and load back the changes and thus it should work.

There aren't any other with this kind of problem, is it? If not, I think my suspicion about there being the wrong .SAV file in the first place is correct.

[Dos]

Originally Posted by Lerxst

Theoretically, all I should need to do is create a new .SAV with the identical names as those used when we started up Zelda, place that in the VBA (PC) folder, load the save state, save ingame, reset the emulator and load back the changes and thus it should work.

No theory needed, you shouldn't have any problems xfering a .sav(in game) between vba and gpsp. Luckly most GBA games let you save at any point, which makes gpsp not working with save states a non issue.

[Lerxst]

Originally Posted by Dos

No theory needed, you shouldn't have any problems xfering a .sav(in game) between vba and gpsp. Luckly most GBA games let you save at any point, which makes gpsp not working with save states a non issue.

Well actually my theory was correct. Since the .SAV had the wrong player name in it compared to the save state, it didn't work. Once I created a new .SAV with the same name used as in the save state, VBA PC happily save in game, and GPSP happily loaded the .SAV, with full game progress and all.

[Dos]

Originally Posted by Lerxst

Well actually my theory was correct. Since the .SAV had the wrong player name in it compared to the save state, it didn't work. Once I created a new .SAV with the same name used as in the save state, VBA PC happily save in game, and GPSP happily loaded the .SAV, with full game progress and all.

Glad to here it, happy gaming to you and your spouse =)

[Exophase]

It's some kind of weird EEPROM bug. I haven't investigated it yet.

It'll transfer for some games, won't for others.