Castlevania SOTN save freeze

[rimsky82]

I've been wanting to play through SOTN on PSX, so I bought an original on ebay, because burning discs is unreliable and I didn't want to get out an old computer that will burn at slow speeds and find a slow burning disc. Anyway, it's a great game to own.

So for shits & giggles I threw on one of my many gamesharks that already had some SOTN codes on it and turned on inf. hearts, hp, mp, and gold. Of course they were RAM hacks that gave me astronomical numbers of everything. I played for a bit anyway, and when I got to the save point I pressed up and the game froze.

Reset, and found the save was attempted, but corrupted. Looks like it was FF'd. So i thought maybe it was the codes, so I found helder's asm cheats for hp,mp, and hearts and thought that would be enough to experience the game casually. Got to save point, same thing.

WTF? I suppose I should try without the gameshark, but I don't see anybody else with this problem?

Original hardware, original disc, not my modded playstation. Later I'll try without the shark, and also with a different shark, as I have like 8 of them laying around. It sucks that it takes so long to get to a save point. Maybe I can find a good save point online to load and test, and try and find my dexdrive and see if it works on one of these computers. I will probably also pick up a couple more original memory cards as well.

Any ideas? Anybody else experience this?

[ReyVGM]

Well, either the disc is scratched and it freezes on a save spot, or your memory card is damaged. Unlike a cart, a disc can play just one up until a point.

Gamefaqs has a lot of saves you could try.

BTW, wrong forum to post this, newbie :P

[rimsky82]

I don't think it's the disc, it's in very good condition, and I've tried different save points.

[ReyVGM]

Then the memory card? Did you format the card? Did you use a different card?

A cheat code can't screw up the disc, as you know, but it can screw up the memory card. I'm sure you know all that, but I don't know what else to tell you.

The disc is in good condition, the codes can't modify the disc. The only thing left is the memory card. The only times I've seen something like that happening is when there's a cheat involved or a damaged disc/card. Could be the console too, but if it's playing the game just fine, it shouldn't freeze every time you try to save.

[lee4]

what version of gameshark are you using?

[Helder]

I used those ram codes back in the day on my real game and console and never had issues but it could be something from one of the codes acting up. Unfortunately the emulators don't have this happen so hard to troubleshoot. I say test it with no codes then get to a save and if it works we can see which code is messing with the save.

[rimsky82]

what version of gameshark are you using?

v2.4 I think, don't remember. Not a pro if that's what you mean. My pro doesn't always want to boot, even after repairing the solder connections. I might need to reflash it. Going to try without a GS, then with a different, formatted MC, if either of those work, than a different GS.

I somehow doubt it's a code issue.

[rimsky82]

It's working now, I'm pretty sure the culprit was the memory card. Either it was too full, or the file system is getting corrupted. Either way I was able to hook up my dexdrive and back everything up.