WIP : Saturn Save Data Manager, Pseudo Saturn Kai & USB dev cart, etc
Written by cafealpha
6 comments
Classified in : Saturn, Programming, Mylife
Saturn Save Data Manager is an application in order to manage (copy, delete, etc) save data on your Saturn.
Basically, it is similar to the save data manager provided by Saturn BIOS, but also offers extra things, such as multiple selection of items to copy/delete, GPL license, and also save data import from various formats.
Saturn Save Data Manager main screen running on emulator.
It also works on real hardware, but I was too lazy
to take a picture of my TV screen
At first, this Save Data Manager was made only in order to test Virtual Memory Cart behavior, so maybe user interface looks a little cheap, but I plan to improve this in the future according to first users eventual feedback
I really want to thank two people whose work helped to make this application :
- Rockin-B : for his good old SaveGameManager application (yes, I copied the name of the application).
- hitomi2500 : for his ss-save-parser application that really helped to understand Saturn Save Data structure. Also, I merged its Save Import related sources to my project, so that copying save data from dump file is possible directly on Saturn too
And, there's one screen that I need to show from ss-save-parser application : the "extract options screen". This is image is worth a thousand words when trying to explain how save data is arranged in Saturn backup RAM
THE screen everyone need to see before
hacking Saturn saves data
Save data is arranged as header
(containing save name, comment, etc),
then blocks allocation table,
then data itself, with header data at
the beginning of each blocks.
hacking Saturn saves data
Save data is arranged as header
(containing save name, comment, etc),
then blocks allocation table,
then data itself, with header data at
the beginning of each blocks.
Extra #1 : last month, I took a video of USB dev cart in action !
Nothing really spectacular however, but please watch it if you want to see what developing application with USB dev cart looks like
My dev laptop, a plain, not modded Saturn and USB dev cart,
ready for testing Saturn application on real hardware
- USB dev cart firmware update
- CD-ROM unlock by using Pseudo Saturn hack
- Upload and execution of program from PC to Saturn via USB, allowing testing of application performing CD-ROM access.
Extra #2 : with this USB dev cart, I could dump Shining Force Scenario 1 saves from Gosub .
You can find theses saves here.
Gosub pushed each Shining Force character to their maximum competence on real hardware without using any cheat.
Really impressing work oO
Extra #3 : last month, my car reached its life achievement : 777777 kilometers :]
Wow. Many lucky seven. So beauty 
Next challenge : 777 777 kilometers !
Next challenge : 777 777 kilometers !