----- SOLUTION FOUND -----
Posting a solution here for any CTRL+F heroes

Retroarch Quick Menu > Core Options > HLE BIOS = ON

I don't know what the setting even does, I'm just glad autoload actually works now.
Gonna put some tags below for search engines to pick up on:

lr-flycast, flycast, autoload, auto-load, auto load, crash, savestate, black screen, saves, saving, loading, loads

Ah great, that put me down the right path. I did have the .info, and my retroarch.cfg for NES was pretty bare bones, but looking for other .cfg files I found this:
Turns out I had a really old config file under ~/.config/retroarch/config/FCEUmm/FCEUmm.cfg

Renaming that file so it wasn't loaded fixed the issue - now I can use save states in nes games again :)

Thanks!

@DTEAM

Hi, I updated my BIOSs and save other games and now it works. Sorry for this topic.

@mitu
i have created an suggest on libretro github

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/12434

I don't know if it's the correct ways but i was already registered on github so why not try :)

If you know someone on libretro/retroarch developers team pass the suggest to him :)

@dankcushions Perfect. Thanks!

My setup is complicated by my son having a specific ROM set and my using a share to connect to those. It sounds like I might be better off just using MAME2003 core and finding the ROMS for those versions and keeping them all on the SD card of my Pi 4.

@Sjdhydoc said in Help with saving:

task failed: saving state

Exit Emulationstation and you'll see the disk space usage shown before the prompt. If you're near 100%, then you might have a disk full situation so cannot save?

Please add more info about your system, as detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

Save states are supported by the lr-prosystem Libretro core - https://docs.libretro.com/library/prosystem/.

@cyperghost I'm sure you're right! Thanks, but I don't think I have a need for the other tool...the SaveStateManager was the very last thing I missed having on my Pi. :)

Edit: I actually installed it anyway..a gamepad compatible file manager can always come in handy. :) Thanks again!

Just my findings:

commit 0343e3dbd8a22f64698e824e30b08e0887d77b6b
Author: retro-wertz retro-wertz@users.noreply.github.com
Date: Sun Mar 4 21:47:52 2018 +0800

Add missing variable to save state

This is the commit that breaks the loading of existing state files from old pi's.

And for anyone's future reference: here is the github issue regarding it: https://github.com/libretro/libretro-fceumm/issues/215

@rmigd it depends on the emulator, if not handled properly, size of savestates can be different between 32 and 64 bits. Most likely your android device is using arm64 retroarch while your rpi is using arm32 retroarch.

Hi Mitu,
Sorry about not posting that information, must've missed that post. I started collecting the data, but while I was running through it I decided to run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install alsa-utils

After that my save states worked normally even with auto-login enabled. When I originally updated the device was when the save states stopped working, but I guess now that has been figured out :)

@mitu said in Slow writing to external HDD:

I don't know why for @pamput it wasn't set (3rd party image ?).

Nah, I probably just fiddle with it and didn't set it back to ON.

Sorry for my late reply. Unison and rclone are programs to sync local or remote directories. Both are available in the official software repositories of Debian and thus, also in Retropie. Both can be used over an ssh connection, see Transferring ROMs how to enable ssh on Retropie.

You can install them easily with these commands:

sudo apt install unison sudo apt install rclone

Further reading:

Unison Manual: Remote Usage Rclone Docs: SFTP

Finally, @jandalf81 has made a Setup script to sync saves to cloud services. Maybe it can be modified for your needs.

@mitu lol nah i remove it before posting lol

version 2 in light and extended version available --- see first posting!

Complete rewrite Select more then one savestate with B-button (selection list) Extra Menu added Backup of Savestates added Mass delete added (for current game) Rename gamestates to .state.auto (extended version) Rename gamestate to .state0 (extended version) Remove all gamesstates except selected one (extended version)

Thanks @dankcushions I didn't knew that I needed the parent rom. Problem solved. It's up and running. Now I can save my progress in Pacman.

Thank you all.
@mitu and @jonnykesh

You've been a great help.

@mitu perfect, seems easy enough!
Thanks for your help!

This is very interesting idea, if some one could get this to work it would be much clever :)