Restoring Sapphire sav and RTC

[luittuo]

I have an authentic Sapphire cartirdge. I replaced the dead battery in it and started a new save file. The rtc worked fine, berries grew and daily events would refresh like in normal gameplay. After a couple days worth of progress, I decided to backup my sav so that I could use VBA to emulate e-reader cards for it. Once, that was done, I restored the new sav back onto my cartridge. Ever since that point, I basically experience berry glitch/new battery glitch in that berries would no longer grow and daily events no longer refreshed. Two days ago, I decided to try and fix this by downloading pkhex to edit my file. I tried a few things  to varying degrees of success and eventually asked the discord for help where I was advised to simply click the Reset RTC button. Doing so worked in restoring berry growth! However, two days later, my daily events like berry master + wife, lottery, assorted berry gifts, etc. still have not refreshed.

My question then is what can I do to correct this issue? Additionally, why did I have these difficulties in the first place and what can I do to prevent them from recurring if I decide to restore a sav to my cartridge in the future?

Some extra information that may be of use; I am aware of furlock's program to correct new battery glitch but I do not have a gba flashcart and would very much like to avoid getting one. I do have a gba reader/writer and a ds flashcart, however. When I looked at the rtc values for the original sav file pre-e-reader emulation and the current one I was trying to fix, both the "initial time" and "time elapsed" values were perfectly identical. My "time elapsed" value was greater than the "initial time" value by quite a large amount before I used the Reset RTC button. Manually editing either of these values in either direction did not seem to correct any of my issues. Only by using the Reset RTC button did I manage to fix at least berry growth. I had tried manually setting "time elapsed" to 1 day after using Reset RTC but that only resumed berry growth without allowing me to collect dailies. Just for clarification, the sav currently on my cartridge for the last two days I had only used the Reset RTC button on without any manual editing of the timestamp values.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Delta Blast Burn]

VBA has been known to screw with the RTC function. There should be an option to disable the RTC in VBA which might help.

[luittuo]

That's good to know, I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I use VBA to emulate e-reader or whatever. Is there a way to use that to correct my malfunctioning RTC on cartridge, though? Should I try backing up the sav, loading it in VBA with RTC disabled, save the game in the emulator, then restoring that sav back onto cartridge? I think I remember seeing that suggested in a random reddit post on the issue but that didn't seem to have worked for the user with the problem.

[Delta Blast Burn]

Youcould try that. I'm not sure what else you can do except start a new game, then use the block importer to transfer plot flags into the new save, then move all your pokemon.

[shadowofdarkness]

When you transferred the save to VBA it took saved the time your computer was set to as the newest time you played the game in the save game. Then you transferred the save back to the original cartridge that had the RTC still showing a older date, effectively time travelling into the past. The game is just waiting until the RTC catches up and passes the date and time you played it on the computer.

You can easily fix this by running the homebrew RTC changer to set the cartridge to the current real date. Then after that you can transfer the save back and forth all you want with no problems.

Here is the homebrew, two versions one a GBA multiboot file and one a NDS homebrew for use with a NDS flashcart in a 2 slot system

https://github.com/megaboyexe/GBA_RTCRead

[luittuo]

That's perfect, thank you so much!

[funkee]

Ok so, I have the exact same problem, but with my ruby. Found out too late about the VBA thing, and now berries wont grow on any of my save backups. Even after connecting it to Pokemon Box GC and getting the "Berry Program updated" message, nothing seems fixed.

I wanted to give @shadowofdarkness's homebrew a go, because that sounds like the solution to my problem.

.... But how do I use homebrew? 

I have been using DSTT for my save-backup-making until now.

[SkyLink98]

Download the homebrew into your DSTT microsd and run it.

[funkee]

Well yes, but which files belong where?

I got it to work by basically copying all files into all folders and crossing fingers.

It worked! And setting the clock on my Ruby to my laptops current date and time fixed the issue.

Thanks for your suggestions! 

[SkyLink98]

Download the rtcread-ds.zip file, extract it and copy the rtcread-ds.nds file into your microsd. Every DS homebrew should be in .nds file format.

I'm happy that it worked

Edited August 13, 2020 by SkyLink24