Hardware Recovering a bricked Pokémon X cartridge?

Gamergrrrl

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Powersaves bricked my Pokémon X cartridge during a read. ( I thought reading should be safe! )

By bricked I mean that the 3DS doesn't even recognize it - I just get a white square in the 3DS menu.

Has anyone managed to either fix cartridges this has happened to or to read off of one to create a rom including the saved game?

thanks!
/gamergrrrl
 

Foxi4

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If the NAND on the cartridge is corrupt, I'm afraid that nothing short of flashing it again would help, and that functionality is probably restricted on commercial carts.
 

Foxi4

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Pokemon X/Y stores the save file on the same chip as the game - if this chip becomes corrupt or wiped, the game dies along with the save file.

Perhaps you should contact Nintendo regarding a replacement? Neglect the Power Saves part of the story, just tell them the cartridge no longer works and you have no idea why.
 

The Real Jdbye

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Not necessarily. It could've been an unexpected jump in voltage or something - you never know how those third-party devices work. I'm no expert though, this is all just my educated guess.
In any case, I've heard of card2 games being bricked by accidentally overwriting the ROM before. If he could overwrite the corrupted part with data from a clean ROM dump, assuming that's the problem, it should be fixed, but that would be tricky to do. Perhaps the easiest way to do it would be by using 3DS homebrew rather than having to reverse engineer the cart communication and develop his own PC software to replicate it.

You could be right though, such a thing shouldn't happen but if the quality of the hardware components in either the PowerSaves dongle or his PC are subpar, it could.
 

Gamergrrrl

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Just want to reiterate - I wasn't writing to the cartridge. I was just doing a read. I don't really understand how a read can corrupt.
 

The Real Jdbye

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Just want to reiterate - I wasn't writing to the cartridge. I was just doing a read. I don't really understand how a read can corrupt.
That could have been a bug in how PowerSaves communicates with the cart, causing it to overwrite part of the chip instead. Of course it might just as well be as Foxi4 says and in that case you wouldn't be able to unbrick it. No easy way to tell really. If you had a 4.x 3DS you could try to dump the ROM, and you'd be able to see if it's just part of the ROM that's corrupted or if the chip is actually damaged.
 
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Gamergrrrl

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Is there an introductory page to dumping ROMs you can point me to?

How could one tell the difference between data damage and chip damage? My guess would be in the case of chip damage the dump would fail, but in the case of data damage the rom wouldn't run?

Is it possible to reflash the game to the cartridge? And if so, how?

When dumping a rom from a pokémon X or Y cartridge, if the data is healthy, should it be possible to use the save file from the cartridge?

thanks!
 

trumpet-205

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Just want to reiterate - I wasn't writing to the cartridge. I was just doing a read. I don't really understand how a read can corrupt.
Like Foxi4 have said, a voltage spike could've easily killed the chip. Poorly made or defective device can cause voltage spike.

Your best chance is to contact Nintendo and arrange for a replacement. Don't even think about flashing the ROM back, it is way out of ordinary consumer league (plus you need corresponding equipment, which costs a lot more than a game).
 

Jayro

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I think it's dumb that they save to the NAND of the cart... but then that means the NAND-based games (Card 2?) have a read/write NAND... Could someone possibly hardware flash a new ROM of the same size into a retail cart? (Has anyone even tried?)
 

Clydefrosch

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I think it's dumb that they save to the NAND of the cart... but then that means the NAND-based games (Card 2?) have a read/write NAND... Could someone possibly hardware flash a new ROM of the same size into a retail cart? (Has anyone even tried?)
as far as i know, only a small part is rewritable, probably about 1-2mb. the save data part.
i have no idea how powersave works but unless you can write a clean save file on it (or if you can and it still doesnt work) its save to say its gone for good. hope for replacement, or get a new game for 20 bucks and dont cheat again
 

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