Could Castaway Lead To Smc Failure?


Captainbubby

Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2004
Messages
226
Hi all,

Don't be offended by the post, I'm in no way angry or accusing anyone of anything. My SMC just died all of a sudden today. It's under warranty so theres no problem getting a new one. Yesterday Castaway wouldn't load once I'd booted it up, on the bootup screen it would say "check save state 27" or something along those lines, I deleted the save state file and it worked again. Once I went into Castaway again the GP32 froze and the SMC was not acknowedged by the GP32 and the the GP32 manager on the pc kept giving me a timed out error. I used the SMC recover which said "Recovered (1) error" but it still doesn't work. The SMC can't be formatted and I suppose it's died.

Was my SMC heading for the afterlife anyway and screwed up my saves in Castaway or are there any other possible causes?

Thanks a billion. Love Castaway alot! :)
 
This could be an extraordinary coincidence but one of my Smc`s stopped working on my old non-lit GP32, it also had Castaway on it at the time of failure. When I decided to purchase a BLU-GP32 i found that the SMC worked fine on it but my old GP32 still won`t recognise it.
 
EVERY application which saves on your smc can lead to failure if the power breaks down during writing.
 
Noted!

However in no instance did the GP32 shut down due to the batteries. I have rechargables which I replace every 2nd day. :)
 
EvilDragon posted on Mar 23 2005 at 03:09 PM said:
EVERY application which saves on your smc can lead to failure if the power breaks down during writing.


I agree, but that doesn`t explain why my 64mb Smc stopped working on my old gp32_console but works fine on my BLU gp32_console. My 128mb Smc works perfectly on both
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Deserthamster posted on Mar 23 2005 at 01:17 PM said:
This could be an extraordinary coincidence but one of my Smc`s stopped working on my old non-lit GP32, it also had Castaway on it at the time of failure. When I decided to purchase a BLU-GP32 i found that the SMC worked fine on it but my old GP32 still won`t recognise it.

Maybe the contacts are dirty in your old unit? Remember how old cartridge based consoles had a problem reading carts sometimes until you cleaned the contacts?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
SMC's are crappy :/ Very easy to corrupt through normal things especially on the GP32 due to its crappy filesystem handling.

ie: If you use a card writer on it, you could end up with troubvle.. ie: CArd writers use a modern filesystem, while the GP32 uses the old 8.3 filesystem. So if you have a long file on there, it actually uses multiple 8.3 entries to represent itself. If you then delete something on the GP32 and then add somethign, it could corrupt the SMC in terms of the new filesytem and require format or even make the card invisible to most machines. ie: I've got a few SMC's that wont' read on WinXP but will read from Unix or GP32, since the filesystem is borked. So one has to be careful.

CaSTaway itself can't hurt anything except in the same way any app can (running out of power, etc.)

The savestate hang means the savestate file was and CsaSTaway coudlnt' read it, so soundslike it was corrupted before you ran CaSTaway.

I suggest everyone always keep SMC backups.. with a GP32, they do 'go' on occasion unless your'e really careful.

(I've got 2 SMCs; one goes all the time, righ tin the commercial games even. It sjust a flaky SMC I guess that once in awhile cleans out; the other loses its data every 4 or 5 months.... DrMD recently. I see no pattern, its just SMC and GP32 technology aren't so smart :)

jeff
 
I use a card reader and have put long files on my cards and haven't had a problem yet. I don't save games alot though so that may be one reason. I also make sure there is no dust or fingerprints on the contacts too.
 
Jolly good! Thanks for clearing that up skeezix, I appreciate it. :)

Here's hoping that the gp32_console 's possible successor has SD cards instead.
 
Back
Top