# Backing up GBC saves



## Burbruee (Mar 16, 2010)

Hello,

While waiting for HeartGold/SoulSilver to come out for the DS I played quite a bit of the original Pokemon Gold for Game Boy Color.
Now, pretty much everyone I know have had their battery dry out on these old games. I'm still pretty amazed that mine still saves perfectly fine after all these years.

It's been what, 10 years since I bought the game, and maybe 12 years since Pokemon Yellow. (which also still works!)
But some day, the batteries WILL die, so I wanted to make a backup of the save data before it's too late and put on my computer/nds so I can continue playing the games forever on emulators.

So what I'm looking for is a device which can connect to the game boy games and dump the save data through some cable. I've heard of some device which can dump both the ROM itself (which I don't care about) and also the save. It connected to the computer through the parallel cable and I believe it was called something like "Game Boy Transfer 2". But try googling that and all you'll ever find are Transfer Pak for the N64..

If you know where I can buy such a device today at a reasonable price which ships to Europe, please post here!


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## FAST6191 (Mar 16, 2010)

You will be lucky to find such a device in this day and age at all let alone at a decent price but:
http://www.ziegler.desaign.de/readplus.htm...mming%20systems

Still as you asked you might be able to find something on: http://www.consolegoods.co.uk/ (it is the shop for the long standing http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/backup/ site that everyone links when such questions arise).


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## Burbruee (Mar 16, 2010)

FAST6191 said:
			
		

> You will be lucky to find such a device in this day and age at all let alone at a decent price but:
> http://www.ziegler.desaign.de/readplus.htm...mming%20systems
> 
> Still as you asked you might be able to find something on: http://www.consolegoods.co.uk/ (it is the shop for the long standing http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/backup/ site that everyone links when such questions arise).


Yeah I checked consolegoods earlier, they don't seem to have the device in stock anymore.
But I found exactly what I was looking for right here: http://www.hkems.com/product/gb/gba-tr.htm
for 19.99 USD. Not sure what the shipping costs would be, and the whole ordering process seems a bit weird. 
But it appears to be the only place still selling them.


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## UltraMagnus (Mar 17, 2010)

I have one of these on the way, partly for this purpose.


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## Jakob95 (Mar 20, 2010)

Was wondering if you could do this with a EZ-Flash iV and a GBA.


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## FAST6191 (Mar 21, 2010)

You can not use GBA hardware- the GB/GBC is effectively an entirely separate hardware setup inside the GBA (SP).


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## DanTheManMS (Mar 21, 2010)

Agreed with FAST6191.  As soon as you insert a GB/GBC cartridge, the GBA boots into GBC mode which your link cable and flash software will have no idea how to work with.  Even if you get the GBC cartridge inserted while still in GBA mode (whether through lucky timing during boot or simply by sawing off the corner of the cartridge), the software will still have no clue how to interact with the GBC cartridge at all.  

'Tis a shame, since I *really* wanted to backup my Azure Dreams save after the cartridge stopped booting past the opening logos.  Ended up playing the game on Lameboy and finally beating it after about 4 attempts throughout the yeras.


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## Jakob95 (Mar 21, 2010)

Hmm I guess my Pokemon Crystal save will be lost for all eternity when the battery dies.  I wasted around 30 hours on it.


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## YayMii (Mar 31, 2010)

BTW, the Game Boy Advance has a physical switch inside the game slot that is pushed in when a Game Boy/Game Boy Color game is put in. You will notice that GBA games have more indents on the corners compared to GB/GBC games.

BTW, both my Pokémon Red and Pokémon Gold batteries died, although Red can keep a charge for 4 days before deleting my save.


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## UltraMagnus (Mar 31, 2010)

UltraMagnus said:
			
		

> I have one of these on the way, partly for this purpose.
> Just to let everyone know, I received it today, they are genuine and it works.
> 
> QUOTE(YayMii @ Mar 31 2010, 04:56 AM) BTW, both my Pokémon Red and Pokémon Gold batteries died, although Red can keep a charge for 4 days before deleting my save.



you need to replace the battery, you can buy tabbed button cells to do so, but you will need to solder it.


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## mpg187 (Apr 6, 2010)

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=219...p;#entry2732063
I made a thread there (On my phone and too lazy to type it out)
But is a smartboy what I need? Does it do ROM and RAM? Can I copy the RAM back to the cart?

EDIT: On my laptop now, I will quote my post in the link above


			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> I need a device that can let me transfer saves games from my Gameboy (Color) cartridges to files on my computer that I can use in emulators. Also it should be able to dump ROMs too.
> 
> I believe the device I am looking for is called a Flash Linker. I need one for Gameboy/Gameboy Color not Gameboy advance (Although if it does both then that's fine, and I hear there are ones that do GBA that can do the older Gameboy games with an addon, if that's the case I would need the addon too). I have tried like every Video Game forum I could think of and Yahoo! Answers to no avail. Does anyone here know where I can get one?


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## UltraMagnus (Apr 6, 2010)

It can read and write both ROM and RAM.  It can be a little unreliable (take 4-5 timeouts before you get a successful write), but it is the only USB device on the market that can do what it does...


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## mpg187 (Apr 6, 2010)

It can write the ROM? You mean it's own ROM right, not on the cartridge?

To me it doesn't matter what interface is uses, I have computers with LPT ports. But USB would be easier.

What OSes does it work with?

On my laptop I have Vista and Ubuntu Dualboot. I am not sure if it would support Linux. Might not even support Vista because it can have compatibility problems. I have server 2003 on my desktop, would that work?

PS Do the makers of Smart Boy ship world wide? How long does it take them to reply, I have sent an email yesterday and got no response yet


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## UltraMagnus (Apr 6, 2010)

mpg187 said:
			
		

> It can write the ROM? You mean it's own ROM right, not on the cartridge?
> it comes with its own flashable gbc flashcart.
> 
> 
> ...


yes, they do, they are in China.


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## mpg187 (Apr 7, 2010)

So it can write ROMs to it's own cartridge, read the ROM of official cartridges, and read/write the SRAM or official cartridges?

OK you tested it on XP. Anyone test it on Windows 7 or Vista (I just remembered, my Tablet has XP on dualboot so I do have an XP computer with a USB port, if Vista and 2003 don't work.) It would be nice if it worked on Linux, but it's not a big deal if I need to use Windows to do this, then it's worth it.

How long does it take them to reply, on the site posted here there's a gmail. I emailed it and haven't got a response yet, will it take a while for them to respond?

Do they still make/sell these? On this page I found Googling there is a link to this page (redirects to http://stoneagegamer.com/smartboy.aspx) and that page says:


			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> LOOKING FOR SMARTBOY? PLEASE READ: Smartboy is currently under redevelopment to support multiple games on a single cart. Because of this SMB Team has halted all production of the older Smartboy system. If you would like to get on our Smartboy status alert newsletter please e-mail [email protected] and request to be added.



Is there more than one place to get it, if so, what is the best place to get it (faster delivery, better prices, more trustworthy, etc)


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## The Pi (Apr 7, 2010)

my yellow still saves fine


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## mpg187 (Apr 7, 2010)

nathanking said:
			
		

> my yellow still saves fine


But for how long?


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## UltraMagnus (Apr 7, 2010)

on their front page (smartboy.ugu.pl) the is a buy now paypal button... so I assume they still sell them.

as for how long it takes them, generally I have got responses rather promptly, although it can take them a couple of days to respond.


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## mpg187 (Apr 7, 2010)

I didn't notice that until you brought it up, all I seen was a link to the FAQ and it said to email their gmail.

Does the buy now there include the device that lets you copy ROMs and Saves and the 32Mb cart?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3307/347565..._6858874c52.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2654/391267..._2be7b757e9.jpg

Is there a difference between those two carts other than the color? Do they have the same functionality? Will games for Gameboy Color show up in full color in a GBC or GBA?


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## mpg187 (Apr 15, 2010)

Bump sorry


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## UltraMagnus (Apr 15, 2010)

yes. no. yes. yes.


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## toazron1 (May 23, 2011)

Sorry for the bump, but will these work with an N64 gameboy tower (pokemon stadium)?


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## Rockman GFF (May 23, 2011)

toazron1 said:
			
		

> Sorry for the bump, but will these work with an N64 gameboy tower (pokemon stadium)?


They do since it flashes as Single Boot.

Game Genie, Game Shark, and Super GameBoy 1&2 (if it's SGB compatible) also work.


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## epicCreations.or (May 26, 2011)

Sorry for the slight bump, but I thought I'd inform you fellows of something that might work. 

If you have an LSDJ flash cart (I use a 64M Smart Card) combined with this bad boy, you might be able to coax out a save file without an expensive Transferer or the like.  I ordered one recently and I'll report back if successful.


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## thaddius (May 26, 2011)

Those are fine if you don't want to back your saves up on the computer. Also, pay special attention to the list of games that it won't work with (in one of the reviews someone posted a list).


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## mpg187 (Aug 20, 2012)

Does anyone know where I can get a SmartBoy USB Gameboy cart programmer?


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## thaddius (Aug 20, 2012)

You'd usually buy one from their website. They deactivate the buy link when they're having problems, and it's been deactivated for some time now. The only place you'll be able to get one is if someone puts one up on the buy/sell/trade forum or something like that.


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