Omnimaga
Calculator Community => TI Calculators => General Calculator Help => Topic started by: Raylin on March 22, 2010, 07:34:10 am
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So, for some godforsaken reason, my calculator is being a data whore.
When I extract ANY of my groups, I always end up with a program with no data. (16 bytes)
When I delete it, it RAM clears me.
I hope I didn't lose my files.
Any ideas on why this may happen?
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Mhmm this is interesting. I think the only way to fix it is to try sending the groups on the computer or another calc, archive everything if applicable then try ungrouping and see what happens. if your groups are fine, then your calc needs a fresh memory reset (RAM and Archive), or maybe even an OS reinstall. If you reach the point where you have to reinstall the OS, then attempt making new groups afterward, and they can't ungroup fine, or if your current groups ungroup fine on other calcs and not yours, then I am afraid your calc might be bricked x.x
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Try using Brandon Wilson's group tool to only ungroup what you need, and to group it to ROM. Then, reset your RAM. Delete the old group and re-group it all. That's what I do with a corrupt group.
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Oh wait forgot about that one, that could maybe work too.
Btw, does CelticIII has group/ungroup support? Maybe that could be another option
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Yeah, I think that Celtic III has support for groups.
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Celtic III does *not* handle corrupted groups. A poor workaround: don't index the grouped items; just start extracting them item by item, checking each item after each extraction for its integrity. Once you've found the corrupt entry, clear your RAM then ungroup what you were able to successful extract. Back that up and then try to look for other methods of recovering that data. I'm sorry, but I can't think of any other way to deal with something like that.
I've had this happen to me a couple of times before. Thankfully, I've had other backups I could fall back on.
Sorry to hear this. Best of luck to you.
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AAaah ok I see x.x
Now waht about SourceCoder? I think it supports ungrouping, right? (see Cemetech)
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Group corrupting is too much common. :( Bad TI.
GroupTool is quite useful. The only problem is it can be slow seeing large groups.
AAaah ok I see x.x
Now waht about SourceCoder? I think it supports ungrouping, right? (see Cemetech)
Yes it does. It opens all the programs and I don't remember if lets you edit other kind of variables.
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I found something:
http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/grouping
It's also been reported that in large enough groups, the calculator may change a bit in the data when ungrouping — in practice, this might result in an error when running the newly-ungrouped program. To be on the safe side, you should check that a group "works" before deleting the original files. It's also possible that splitting the large group in two (if this is feasible) will fix the issue.
I had this happen on OS 1.12 through 1.14. Mana Force came out with a slightly corrupted program once ungrouped in earlier versions once, causing me to have to re-release the game. However, I did not know this still happened in newer OS versions (given TIBD started in 2006, by then most people were probably using 1.18 or later)
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On a related note: have you also been plagued by those ERR:VERSION errors in programs and groups? I think I must have fixed those version bytes a kajillion times at school for people who couldn't transfer their favorite game to their friend. ('Where's Matthias gone? URGENT!!' Gaahhh...)
I haven't got a clue how those version bytes got changed, though. Anyone?
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Yeah I got those a lot. Very annoying, and back then I lost many game progress due to this. When I grouped stuff to backup, I always created two groups, in case.
Fortunately this bug went away in OS 1.18
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Oh... Then it must somehow have reappeared in OS 2.43 and 2.40. I've seen the problems there as well. Maybe 1.18 was an exception in the series.
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I also heard people talking about BAD ADDRESS too. What I think is that 1.18 fixed it on 83+ calcs (and fixed the ability to group archived files on 83+SE), but these bugs were either not fully fixed for 84+ calcs or re-appeared later.
(Is it me or does sometimes TI reminds me of both Microsoft and Jester Interactive when it comes to software bugs?)
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I don't remember having those errors.
But most of the groups are made on my calc or from recent downloads...
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If you don't mind spending a few hours with your calculator, I would advise getting Brandon Wilson's flavour of CalcUtil (the one that supports Flash editing) and trying to manually fix your groups. However, be careful what you do with the Flash, cause you can seriously screw up your calculator if you aren't careful.
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^++
CalcUtil is a can of awesome.
GrpTool has proven useful as well.
*Prophet thinks of an awesome article to write and runs off
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If you don't mind spending a few hours with your calculator, I would advise getting Brandon Wilson's flavour of CalcUtil (the one that supports Flash editing) and trying to manually fix your groups. However, be careful what you do with the Flash, cause you can seriously screw up your calculator if you aren't careful.
I saw that. It may be useful for some hacks.
But better ask Brandon whether the flash unlocking and write to flash is "clean"...
Wondering if flash writing works in the z80 calc emulators...
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It does. (at least in TilEm) I tested it.
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If you don't mind spending a few hours with your calculator, I would advise getting Brandon Wilson's flavour of CalcUtil (the one that supports Flash editing) and trying to manually fix your groups. However, be careful what you do with the Flash, cause you can seriously screw up your calculator if you aren't careful.
I saw that. It may be useful for some hacks.
But better ask Brandon whether the flash unlocking and write to flash is "clean"...
Wondering if flash writing works in the z80 calc emulators...
I assume some of the mistakes that you can do can trigger bad stuff such as deleting the OS certificate, right?
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Yes. It's possible, but you need a bit of [un]luck. The certificate requires flash unlocked to read it, but there is no further restriction to prevent people from writing to it.
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Yes. It's possible, but you need a bit of [un]luck. The certificate requires flash unlocked to read it, but there is no further restriction to prevent people from writing to it.
It is certainly possible, but from what I hear, BrandonW is using romcalls to perform the write to Flash (why write a routine yourself if they give you something for that already?) In that case, there are safeguards built into those routines that deny writing to the certificate page. It's so important to TI, they have another romcall to use if you want to write there.
Still wouldn't try it. Wouldn't risk it. For the curious, the certificate page is the second to last page in Flash. (Either $1E, $3E, or $7E)
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There is _WriteFlashUnsafe... :D
There is _WriteFlash and WriteFlashUnsafe, and, funnily enough, _WriteAByte and _WriteAByteSafe. Both use fallthrough to prevent writing to the cert. page. (and maybe also the 7x pages in OS space? Iambian?)
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Still wouldn't try it. Wouldn't risk it.
that's unless you got your calculator for like $5, though :P
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There is _WriteFlashUnsafe... :D
There is _WriteFlash and WriteFlashUnsafe, and, funnily enough, _WriteAByte and _WriteAByteSafe. Both use fallthrough to prevent writing to the cert. page. (and maybe also the 7x pages in OS space? Iambian?)
The last time I looked at the code, the only restriction (if they have them) that the routines have is the inability to write to the certificate page. Didn't look too hard at the code, tho.
Still wouldn't try it. Wouldn't risk it.
that's unless you got your calculator for like $5, though :P
That's cruelty to calculators! Bad DJ! Bad bad! :P
Anyway. There should be no point in manually fixing the groups if they're on-calculator and in Flash. You should try to extract what you can (by reading off memory addresses if you have to) and then rebuild the group later on. Editing Flash is a messy business anyway.
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bah it's just a ti calc after all, it's not like if it was something much better like a HP or a Casio :D *runs*
On a serious note I wonder if it's really hard to extract stuff like this?
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It's not really hard because groups are not compressed. You can rescue most of the data, but it's a major nuisance to do so.
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I tried doing this with GrpTool.
Oi. It was a pain.
Apparently, every program that was last on the group list was corrupted.
Or had duplicates of itself.
:(
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I had a similar problem once, I managed to fix it by selecting all and extracting to RAM, deleting the old group and re-grouping them. Let me know if that works, Raylin.
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It failed.
All of the programs, when I looked inside of them, were a horrible jumble of jibberish.
Ah well.
I reset ALL MEMORY and started over.
Let's call this a fresh start.
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That definitively sounds like corruption x.x
Now I sure hope you did not lose every single of your calc projects, though :/
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I did and I didn't.
I lost a couple but not all.
:\
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Ouch :/
That makes me scared of backing my calc up, now. I have an idea, though: make sure all my files are on both my Nspire 84+ mode and TI-83+ before trying to group anything or sending stuff to my PC. But that doesn't work for people who only own one compatible calc...
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So, what are you saying?
Just drop the programs straight on the computer?
No grouping?
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I first drop them on a second calc, but it only works if you own two calcs, then on the computer ungrouped. However, I am uncertain this will fix the issue, because I did have corruption with Illusiat 2004 files, too, before.
My suggestion is to keep copies of your files ungrouped and grouped on your calc, then send only the ungrouped files. Once on the PC, test your game in WabbitEmu. if it fails, retry another transfer until they work fine in WabbitEmu. Before attemptuing to send the groups, make sure the ungrouped files on calc are intact. If not, then ungroup them, then send the groups to your comp. Idk if sending files grouped or ungrouped will make a difference, though. It's just that sometimes TI Connect corrupts all files when sent to the PC. Strangely enough, I never heard of this happening until maybe a year ago. Could it be due to recent Windows updates?
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Agreed.
I too only heard about such things a year ago.
Is Microsoft trying to screw TI over?
Farfetched, I know.
But, the possibility exists.
After all, if you're trying to cover up one aspect of the computer, you'll inevitably end up patching the benevolent programs, too.
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Idk, it's just that Microsoft probably won't be careful with compatibility enough when releasing updates, or TI just need to update their stuff more often.