from nowhere DS games wont load on my M3 DS Real

Heartagram616 · Nov 29, 2022

My first post so sorry in advance if im posting it wrong in any way,

my problem is that i switched to a another micro sdhc for my M3 DS real flash cart, and everything worked fine right after i moved everything to the new card when i tested it, and I have not used it since then.
I put my DS lite in my bag and now when i started it up maybe 5-6 days later none of the 15-20 DS games i have on it wont start.
But the weird thing is that i have a bunch om Gameboy, NES, SNES and even more games with the emulators for them and they all work fine.

Im pretty new to game roms and mods and allt that so what im asking is if there is anyone that might know what the broblem could be and what can do to fix it?

just got into alls this fun stuff, i have learned a lot and been able to softmod a wii, ps2, retron 5, i really love it and really wanna learn more

Lostbhoy · Nov 29, 2022

Roms aren't your problem but your card is.

Either your M3 has died or your new sd card is crap. First I would check that you have formatted it correctly then I'd try another card. If both if these fail your M3 is dead my friend as I cannot believe you bought it anytime lately.... These things are about 20 years old!

Good innings if you ask me but the problem lies with your cards and not the roms.

Heartagram616 · Nov 29, 2022

Lostbhoy said:
Roms aren't your problem but your card is.

Either your M3 has died or your new sd card is crap. First I would check that you have formatted it correctly then I'd try another card. If both if these fail your M3 is dead my friend as I cannot believe you bought it anytime lately.... These things are about 20 years old!

Good innings if you ask me but the problem lies with your cards and not the roms.

yeah the M3´s from what i understand is pretty shit, but i i have played DS games on it about a week a go like i said, after i switched to the new sd card, and emulators anf retro games still work fine, could it still be my card thats broken?

thanks for a fast reply btw!

The Real Jdbye · Nov 29, 2022

Heartagram616 said:
yeah the M3´s from what i understand is pretty shit, but i i have played DS games on it about a week a go like i said, after i switched to the new sd card, and emulators anf retro games still work fine, could it still be my card thats broken?

thanks for a fast reply btw!

Empty the card (move all the files off of it) and run h2testw: https://3ds.hacks.guide/h2testw-(windows).html

Nikokaro · Nov 29, 2022

As the OP specified, emulators work while DS roms do not. The SD card would seem to have nothing to do with it. In my opinion you have forgotten some files needed to play DS roms from the original kernel: try checking them again.

Lostbhoy · Nov 29, 2022

Apologies... I obviously missed the bit re emulators still working. As @Nikokaro says, be a good idea to redo the sd card (i hope you backed it up?) or with all latest data files if you can get them.

I had an M3 card for about 15 years before it died and loved the wee thing, but they don't last forever and clones have built in end of life so i just assumed it could be that, sorry for not reading properly!

Nikokaro · Nov 29, 2022

On second thought, the issue of damaged SD is not completely out of the question. It may be that a kernel file is on a damaged memory cluster, and therefore the former results corrupt. In this unfortunate case, you would have to reformat the SD (having backed up kernel, roms and emulators), since if you try to delete the corrupted file you would fail, and you will corrupt the whole SD card. However, once formatted, it would still be usable, but with probably less available space (since damaged clusters often turn out to be unrecoverable).

KleinesSinchen · Nov 29, 2022

Nikokaro said:
It may be that a kernel file is on a damaged memory cluster, and therefore the former results corrupt. In this unfortunate case, you would have to reformat the SD (having backed up kernel, roms and emulators),

No objection here.

Backup data
Format the SD with FAT32
Check the empty SD with h2testw or F3 and replace it on ANY error
Restore data if everything is okay

I can't add anything meaningful to the question about M3 flashcart in particular (and what kernel to use).

Nikokaro said:
[…]However, once formatted, it would still be usable, but with probably less available space (since damaged clusters often turn out to be unrecoverable).

Sadly I have to answer this with a " :teach:

"
It goes off-topic, but it is also still a bit relevant. Both file system corruption and SD hardware damage can lead to unexplained behavior. However, they are not the same.

Less space after formatting a corrupted SD?
That is not how formatting works (nowadays¹). File system corruption is a logical error, not a hardware error with unreadable sectors. Creating a new, empty and sane FAT32 file system takes only seconds and is unable to check the SD for defects and fake.
This is the reason for the existence of F3 and h2testw. I don't know about the wear leveling and/or defect management of SDs. We had some h2testw screenshots (which the big idiot Sinchen didn't bookmark) stating a few KB were corrupted in the check. This would be a sign of classic bad sectors, which could theoretically identified and marked in the file system with the help of what was previously known as "surface scan" (the term makes no sense for flash memory).
Normally flash memory should never show bad sectors, because any defect management would silently use spare sectors after encountering a problem. Such a result either means the controller ran out of spare sectors… or there is no defect management. In both cases such a flash memory has to be replaced instantly.

Relying on a damaged SD is a bit like: "This condom only has one tiny hole. Why shouldn't I trust it?" →

________________________
¹MS-DOS and DOS based Windows systems didn't – by default – offer a quick format option of unformatted disks (floppy disks and newly created HDD partitions). The built-in format command actually performed a full read test to identify bad sectors. What did make sense on floppy disks (even there are some neat tricks around bad areas with direct commands to floppy controller implemented by VGACOPY/386) and old HDDs (about 30 years and older) without own defect management and sector reallocation, became a serious test for patience when installing Win98 on a 80GB HDD. Waiting many hours for the test to complete and have the format utility report no defective sectors (even if the HDD actually had some) and the full available space.

Nikokaro · Nov 29, 2022

And after the intervention of the lady know-it-all, the matter is closed: nothing more remains to be said.

We can pack our things and leave.

KleinesSinchen · Nov 30, 2022

Nikokaro said:
And after the intervention of the lady know-it-all, the matter is closed: nothing more remains to be said.
We can pack our things and leave.

In fact there remains a lot to be said… because I do NOT know it all – like already said above, I've no idea about the M3 itself.
It would be very interesting to know if the actual problem gets solved.

from nowhere DS games wont load on my M3 DS Real

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