Crashed Smc Recovery - How To

[lizard808uk]

I was up late last night playing as per usual, when I switched it off whilst it was still accessing the SMC. Bugger. I turned it back on and the GP32 wasnt playing ball and refused to recognise the SMC still inserted - in effect I had screwed up the SMC. At this point I had that rare brown trouser moment as my SNES RPG saves were on the card (second in a month after flashing the bios). But how do I recover my game saves...? well this is what I did...

Having an SMC card reader really helped and on my PC it read the card fine and so copied all the files across to the PC.

Knowing that my digital camera uses 8.3 file format I formatted the card in the camera. Knowing that Windows formatting isnt especially great. Although am sure there are FAT12 format utilites somewhere out on the 'net.

Copied back across all the files from the PC - a couple had "extra data" so didnt copy those. Most of all the SNES RPG saves were fine!

Lessons to be learned from this are to make sure the GP32 has done its thing before you switch off, and that all is not lost. Card readers are worth their weight in gold.

 

[Evil_Cartman]

go to pc link mode on your FW wit the SMC in. then press select. should be recovered.

HA. this works better

 

[lizard808uk]

I'm running Aquafish FW and PC link is not in the firmware (its an FXE). The PC link in the euro f/w refused to cooperate either.

This SMC was truly f*ed up. I tried all the other so called "recovery" options but they didnt work. Thats why I shoved it in my camera and that somehow worked fine.

 

[Evil_Cartman]

okay............... thats an exeption...

 

[aquafish_]

have you tried to use SMC Recovery in the multi fw? I've make it for these kind of problems... (you'll have to wait 1 hour for formatting but that should work)

 

[lizard808uk]

I forgot about that one. Does that do a full format (including surface)? I guess it probably does if it takes an hour.

Will use it next time my SMC goes tits up. (british expression).

Oh yeh and Aquafish fw is the best! (shameless plug)

 

[nerd of nerds]

Will use it next time my SMC goes tits up. (british expression).

uh huh...

could we explain plz :lol:

 

[edwardar]

I had a SMC that died when using my rio500 mp3 player - I couldn't format it with anything and thought it was dead. But over at Rioworld.org, they suggested using this card reader:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...478405?v=glance

the Zio Dazzle reader is able to format at some kind of "lower level", anyway I bought one and it formatted and fixed my smc. I guess there's a good chance it would work for you.

hope that helps

Ed

 

[Melville]

This is almost on-topic...

An SMC I've been using for a while throws up an error whenever I try to use it with PC-link, and windows claims it is write-protected. Frankly, I didn't even know it was possible to write-protect SMCs.

A bit of reading around turned up that shiny stickers can be put on the cards to write protect them (I always thought they were a particularly obtuse free gift with the card), but looking at the area on the card where the sticker should go, it's no shinier than my other, perfectly normal cards.

This isn't too much of a problem, as the selection of games / apps I have onb the card is pretty good. It's irritating though, so I'd appreciate any ideas what might have caused it / how to solve it.

Ta,
Melville