I just had my first experience with a cart losing a save, and happened to be using an AVS.

Is the whole "hold reset while powering off" thing needed with the AVS? Anyone else run into issues?

AFAIK you still need to do the reset thing when powering down a battery game.

Someone here I think reported Final Fantasy lost a save when they didn't do that. Probably a function of the cartridge and not the AVS.

I'm no expert on the inner workings of NES carts and I'm sure someone else here could pop in and give a real answer, but if I had to GUESS - Maybe it's something to do with hitting Reset giving the cart the time it needs to write some final data to memory while shutting off power literally cuts all power to the cart quite abruptly perhaps causes it to lose that pertinent data.

Would have thought the cart was writing to the SRAM whenever a "save" was created in-game (if not continuously).

Always figured it was just to give the cartridge the cleanest power-down profile as possible (minimize risk of surge, etc)
Could also be a "timing thing" of making sure the battery on the cartridge is the active power source for the SRAM prior to fully cutting power.
 

Yeah if not memory then switching to battery, maybe holding reset puts it in a low power state.

This is the first I have ever heard of this but being that I'm now not 10 years old, my semi-educated guess is that certain capacitors within the NES might abruptly release their stored capacitance when the NES is powered off. This wouldn't be a big deal for RAM but SRAM is much more sensitive to voltage shifts. I have no clue how old SRAM chips worked but they could have had voltage thresholds and if the voltage was ever to high, it might have tripped an internal safety switch that simply cut power to the whole chip so that it wouldn't blow by being overloaded. It would be better to lose some save states than kill the whole chip where save states wouldn't work at all or possibly brick the whole cart.

If my guess is correct, by pressing the reset button, those caps might have been reset in a way that would have allowed a safer drain of the power.

I guess the tone of my question is more along the lines of "do the reasons, mentioned by a few, while holding reset matters with original NES hardware also apply to the AVS?"

Since its an FPGA console, I figure the function of the reset button (in purely electrical terms) might not be the same.

Of course, its also possible that the FPGA firmware is SO accurate, that the old CPU behavior oddities while powering down are preserved :-)

@mog @bunnyboy

that works to loop them into the convo, right?

I don't think that would necessarily explain losing saves on the AVS, since I would have hoped Bunnyboy would have solved that particular issue.

Then again... we know that GB games of that same era obviously only required the power to be turned off (no holdable-reset available).

Primary difference between the two systems being a power supply that converts AC to DC versus being directly on DC/batteries.

 

Good point.  That said, I've noticed that many NES carts also have a single cap on them.  Maybe that cap has it's capacitance properly released on a reset, which would mean the issue is on the NES carts rather than the NES (or AVS) units.  I've not paid much attention to the caps on NES games and I've not noticed when they were or weren't present.  If they are only present on battery save carts, then there's a strong chance that this specific cap is related to the issue.

Also, tech changes with time.  There's also a chance that the SRAM chips improved within the first half of the NES.  This might have only been an issue with games manufactured, say, before 1988.  To be safe Nintendo might have always suggested holding the Reset down, instead of making special rule.  If the chips in the Game Boy games were of a better quality, it might not have mattered, plus they would have been aware that they would have only had one switch for the GB, so they would have manufactured it such that a power-off couldn't cause this type of issue.

I'm just throwing out extra theories.  I'm still not good at my electrical troubleshooting and fixing skills, so it's all an "arm chair" educated guess, but I bet if someone looked into this who had the know-how, they could figure out the reason for this if they've not done so already.  I do know that SRAM chips use to be (if not still were for many years after) quite finnicky. I imagine Nintendo had to make sure that they were properly treated during a power on and a power off.
 

Mog should be along soon. He'll probably know.

I think AaronE also knows a thing or two about how this works.

 

Does @-ing here notify people? I had no clue!

Additional context:

US/NTSC Dragon Warrior 3 cart, Most recent AVS firmware, replaced the battery with one from Console5.

I've replaced the battery in 9 of my other NES carts with no problem (I ordered a batch of 10 from Console5) and I've verified polarity and all that. The cart held its save for a couple of days, then when I powered up last night it was gone. Bummer. I made a new game, and checked this morning and it was still there, so I'm reasonably confident the battery isn't dead or defective. My other carts are all holding their saves without issue, using them with the AVS (including a hand made "repro" Castlevania2 with the save-game functionality, map, and retranslation patch applied), everything has been great.

So I'm wondering a couple of things. If my soldering job was crappy, I'd think it just wouldn't hold a save at-all. That it just wouldn't work. I checked the solder joints with a multimeter, no apparent issues. (I'm a reasonably skilled electronics tech, but haven't worked much with NES hardware specifically until this year)

I only got the AVS a couple of weeks ago, and I'll admit I had just been hitting the power button (without holding reset), but my other save-game carts haven't had any problems.
As such, I figured I'd throw this out to the community to see if anyone has had similar experiences or could verify/debunk that the hold-reset is needed so I can just start doing that rather than waste days/weeks/etc troubleshooting the battery replacement or replacing the SRAM in the cart, etc etc.

Any other thoughts?

No, zi was just being funny.  

 

breakin' up the monotony o' the day, ya'll, right @rlh @Tulpa @arch_8ngel??? #duped #AVS #questionoftheday
 

I requested the @ thing be added once upon a time. Then Dain added it in a test build and never officially published it. Sadness.

Happy Birthday!

Wasn't the argument that it could/would be abused? After all we're a bunch of troublemakers. But so long as we can "fake" multiquote, ostensibly generating notifications to the affected users, I think that counterargument is moot. It'd be nice to have. And yes, I'm well aware that this isn't Twitbook/Instachat.
 

sooth!

edit: sorry, forgot to add tags for easy searching #searching #search #easy #easypeasy #toofar

So an update for any who might be following this thread or curious - I've been "holding reset as I push the power button" for the last few days and haven't lost any more saves yet on that same cart, or others.

I'll report back here if I have any further issues with lost saves on the AVS - it might have just been my own negligence.

I better start doing this. Always do on my toaster, but never thought about it with the AVS :/

The way I understood it on the original NES was that when you power off the console the video chip and circuitry shut down first causing a power spike that momentarily disables the battery resulting in the sram being erased. Holding reset disconnects the cart from these power rails, protecting it from these voltage spikes. I have no idea why this still happens on the AVS. I do know that some later mappers like MMC5 and maybe some of the MMC3s protected the SRAM and prevented it from being erased this way.

I have never done this and I can't remember ever losing a save file on my original toaster NES. Played Zelda 1, Zelda 2, MARIO 3, I think these all had save batteries

mario 3 didnt save

It doesn't when you forget to hold reset before powering off!