How to do RAM dump of DS cartridge? (trying to extract save from repro cart)

zoogie

playing around in the end of life
Developer
Joined
Nov 30, 2014
Messages
8,560
Trophies
2
XP
14,998
Country
Micronesia, Federated States of
> Do you think I should take the dump before doing all that. or after the first softreset?

Try before first and we'll go from there.
 

Pk11

A catgirl with a DSi
Member
Joined
Jun 26, 2019
Messages
1,285
Trophies
1
Age
22
Location
米国
Website
pk11.us
XP
3,878
Country
United States
and here is the dsiram.bin after using your script

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ig6zft7e31bq1hu/dsiram.bin?dl=0
This time it seems it starts at 0x27C228, 100 bytes earlier in the file.

It loaded in Pokémon Chest, this time I don't see any corrupted box Pokémon, but the trainer and party data seems to all be corrupted. I've attached the save after saving it with Pokémon Chest.

Edit: Loading this one in melonDS I get "The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.", so it does recognize the save but also thinks it's too far broken even with the (presumably) checksum fixes from Pokémon Chest.
 

Attachments

  • dsiram-2.sav.zip
    131.6 KB · Views: 39

TheMismatcher

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 18, 2022
Messages
28
Trophies
0
Age
25
Location
Maryland
XP
41
Country
United States
This time it seems it starts at 0x27C228, 100 bytes earlier in the file.

It loaded in Pokémon Chest, this time I don't see any corrupted box Pokémon, but the trainer and party data seems to all be corrupted. I've attached the save after saving it with Pokémon Chest.

Edit: Loading this one in melonDS I get "The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.", so it does recognize the save but also thinks it's too far broken even with the (presumably) checksum fixes from Pokémon Chest.
Yeah I can't get that to load in PKHEX- Though to be fair, I couldn't get the other ones to open in pkhex either without saving in game first.

I can take a few more dumps in various ways
 

TheMismatcher

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 18, 2022
Messages
28
Trophies
0
Age
25
Location
Maryland
XP
41
Country
United States
This time it seems it starts at 0x27C228, 100 bytes earlier in the file.

It loaded in Pokémon Chest, this time I don't see any corrupted box Pokémon, but the trainer and party data seems to all be corrupted. I've attached the save after saving it with Pokémon Chest.

Edit: Loading this one in melonDS I get "The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.", so it does recognize the save but also thinks it's too far broken even with the (presumably) checksum fixes from Pokémon Chest.
do you know the feasibility of copying the hex for like the uncorrupted trainer data from one sav and pasting it over the corrupted trainer data in the other? assuming you know the offset and everything?
 

TheMismatcher

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 18, 2022
Messages
28
Trophies
0
Age
25
Location
Maryland
XP
41
Country
United States
Here is another dump. Done with the new game and soft reset beforehand, but on the menu

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dezyu2dye6ovfq/dsiram.bin?dl=0

Would saving in a different location potentially help? In all these saves I am surfing in a route. I know when doing rng manip it is better to be in a more "quiet" area with less calls on the RNG or anything like that, although considering these dumps are from the menu before a save is loaded I suppose it probably won't matter.

In a personal note I spent the last couple hours filling out all the forms for a lost passport then found mine. oof
 

Gamemaster1379

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 5, 2008
Messages
830
Trophies
1
Age
29
Location
United States
Website
1379tech.110mb.com
XP
2,206
Country
United States
Yeah I'm a tad nervous about story or other data corruption which might not be immediately apparent. I'll try doing as many different things in game as I can to test. There's a lot of potential avenues of corruption though- phone numbers, battle frontier, battled trainers...

I tried opening in PkHex and it shows far more pokemon as corrupted and unreadable then the other programs I've tried (though it's still 0-5 per box). I don't know if that's a good thing as it identifies more potentially bad pokemon or if PkHex can't read pokemon that would function normally
Honestly not surprised. Given it loaded at all, you're making a fair amount of progress. PkHex can also modify, so what you may have to do is take that save and then reconstruct Pokemon by hand by looking at them in game from the originally bugged cart.
 

TheMismatcher

Active Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 18, 2022
Messages
28
Trophies
0
Age
25
Location
Maryland
XP
41
Country
United States
I just wanted to thank everyone so much for all their help! Especially @zoogie and @Pk11 ! I would have said so earlier but just got back from a week long trip with no wifi/ cellular. It took a few times of loading and saving in game and saving using pokemon chest and pkhex but everything seems to be working! Ultimately only 4 pokemon were corrupted or had a corrupted (but stable?) item, so I traded over non corrupted versions of them from the repro cart, got their data, then injected them, then deleted the corrupted pokemon in Pokemon Chest. In the end the only things I lost were my battle video, my battle hall data and my hall of fame data, a small price to pay for everything else that works so much better now. At first I got a few "the save file corrupted, the previous file will be loaded" but it's been running smoothly now for a week with no crashes or issues.

I can play voltorb flip, one of my favorite things to do as a kid, without the game crashing now! Thanks again to everyone who helped out, I really thought this may be impossible but so many people came together to help me find a solution. The internet is great.
 

Keitho

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Nov 6, 2022
Messages
1
Trophies
0
Age
40
XP
22
Country
Germany
Hey guys want to ask also regarding a repro platinum save file - my game doesnt boot on 3ds but i can extract a file from gm9 and doesnt work in emulators even though the length is kinda the same but 1000 times smaller (MB to KB) - checkpoint does recognize the game but only gets a 512B file instead of a 512KB file
I also tried to install this 128KB file with nds forwarder and get a Platinum logo but still doenst start - then went into the virtual ram - at least from the file size the arm9ext, axiwram and dsp could be a potential save file with 512KB, but I dont know
could that be potentially it? (didnt work on desmume)

Ok basicallay this was obtained from Checkpoint haha:
|× |× · P o k é m o n P l a t i n
N i n t e n d o P o k é m o n P l a t i n
N i n t e n d o
 
Last edited by Keitho,

Lautzzz

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Jun 3, 2023
Messages
1
Trophies
0
Age
31
XP
12
Country
United States
I am literally in the exact same position and i've followed the instructions I just do not know much about coding and dont know where my save fil would be or how to separate it. Any instructions would be great!
 

Susername1

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Mar 23, 2024
Messages
2
Trophies
0
Age
18
XP
4
Country
Canada
I am literally in the exact same position and i've followed the instructions I just do not know much about coding and dont know where my save fil would be or how to separate it. Any instructions would be great!
How did you get the script to work? I use Windows 10 and it instantly closes whenever I open it.
 

Kwyjor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 23, 2018
Messages
4,221
Trophies
1
XP
4,384
Country
Canada
How did you get the script to work?
When you ask questions like this it is generally helpful to say exactly what script you are referring to.

I use Windows 10 and it instantly closes whenever I open it.
Open a Command Prompt window and run the script from there instead of just trying to open the script directly.
 

Susername1

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Mar 23, 2024
Messages
2
Trophies
0
Age
18
XP
4
Country
Canada
When you ask questions like this it is generally helpful to say exactly what script you are referring to.
My bad I thought that was the only one anybody mentioned

I already tried opening it with a command prompt but still nothing. I dragged and dropped it, and manually typed it in.
 

Kwyjor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 23, 2018
Messages
4,221
Trophies
1
XP
4,384
Country
Canada
My bad I thought that was the only one anybody mentioned
You still haven't said exactly what script you are referring to.

I already tried opening it with a command prompt but still nothing. I dragged and dropped it, and manually typed it in.
I don't think the window instantly closed, so what exactly happened?
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    LeoTCK @ LeoTCK: im going off now...I'll turn off my brain