Hacking any way to push / upload a rom to a cartridge?

[KateHanami]

long story short, I have a few R4 clones with a borked firmware and time-bombed, and I already have a Luma CFW on my 2DS with a 16GB SD card, so I have no need for a flashcart
is there anything similar (or rather, opposite) to GodMode9 that lets me push a NDS rom to that borked flashcart? they were designed to be updater-able with a patch on the inner SD card, do I think is totally possible to push a ROM from the outer console

 

[Takokeshi]

In theory yes, if the chip that stores the firmware is rewritable. In practice, no, there wouldn't be enough space to actually fit anything useful on there. If you're able to write to the card you're better off just rewriting a functional firmware to unbrick the card, and use it as normal.

If the cards are one of these these you may be able to just use ntrboot flasher to flash the original firmware back to the card.

https://3ds.hacks.guide/ntrboot.html

https://3ds.hacks.guide/installing-boot9strap-(ntrboot)#section-v---removing-ntrboot

If they still don't work despite flashing the correct original firmware, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. Same if your card is not on the list (although depending on the card it's possible support for it could be added eventually.)

(Welcome, by the way :3)

 

[KateHanami]

In theory yes, if the chip that stores the firmware is rewritable. In practice, no, there wouldn't be enough space to actually fit anything useful on there. If you're able to write to the card you're better off just rewriting a functional firmware to unbrick the card, and use it as normal.

If the cards are one of these these you may be able to just use ntrboot flasher to flash the original firmware back to the card.

[link removed]

[link removed]

If they still don't work despite flashing the correct original firmware, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. Same if your card is not on the list (although depending on the card it's possible support for it could be added eventually.)

(Welcome, by the way :3)

well, I took a quick look with GodMode9, and it was nothing more than bombermands.nds and bombermands.sav or something along those line...
while, yes, I would benefit a lot more from flashing a romloader into the cart, I would like to have a re-writeable game cart, for things like download play and 3DS actively log / now playing
I have Luma3DS and TWlIght menu, so this is more for the "cool factor"

anyways, thank you for your information, I could maybe write am app of something to flash the card

"an ACE can never lose"

 

[Takokeshi]

You don't need to write an app, there is already one designed to do this, as I've directed you to.

Yes, it shows a .nds on the cart, but this is a very small "rom" that just steals the header from a legitimate game, with some code to load the kernel from SD card. There isn't enough space to write full games on there.

Let's say there was enough space, bootleg carts like this don't really work on 3ds anyway (although it's possible that custom firmware might be able to lift all the checks and allow it to run.) Flashcarts work by exploiting a vulnerability that bypasses the antipiracy check, a part of this exploit involves using a legitimate game to spoof itself as. There are only a limited number of games that this exploit could work on though. This is why the AK2i never got updated to work on 1.4.5 firmware (an over-simplified explanation, but you get the idea.)

Download play should work just fine via nds-bootstrap nowadays, and if you want individual games showing up in activity log, might I suggest using forwarders?

 

[KateHanami]

You don't need to write an app, there is already one designed to do this, as I've directed you to.

Yes, it shows a .nds on the cart, but this is a very small "rom" that just steals the header from a legitimate game, with some code to load the kernel from SD card. There isn't enough space to write full games on there.

Let's say there was enough space, bootleg carts like this don't really work on 3ds anyway (although it's possible that custom firmware might be able to lift all the checks and allow it to run.) Flashcarts work by exploiting a vulnerability that bypasses the antipiracy check, a part of this exploit involves using a legitimate game to spoof itself as. There are only a limited number of games that this exploit could work on though. This is why the AK2i never got updated to work on 1.4.5 firmware (an over-simplified explanation, but you get the idea.)

Download play should work just fine via nds-bootstrap nowadays, and if you want individual games showing up in activity log, might I suggest using forwarders?

yes, I know how it work, I already have Luma3DS so all carts are whitelisted, (including homebrew and fake TitleIDs) I was using Luma every since SoundHax on 9.2

I know Download Play works from cart-to-console, but it doesn't work from cart-to-cart (for example HGSS to BW transfer or B2W2 and DR bonus content), and yeah, I could use forwarders, but they would use nds-bootstrap, which doesn't work too well last time I've checked (long ago)

and you said there was already an app to flash the carts? the link you showed me was for the inner SD card, if I were to flash the rom as a firmware, that would permanently become a game cart for that ROM, correct? I want to make an app that I can push a ROM from my console into the flashcart instead of flashing the cart

in regard to space, yeah, I know it can be an issue, these flashcarts were never meant to be used this way, so the makers had had no need to make anything special about them, but, I believe, as some form of anti-piracy, the ROM inside an official game cart needs to be 127MB, 256MB or 512MB, so it's maybe probably possible with some luck that the flashcarts have enough for a simpler game

either way, thank you for informing me, I'll dig deeper when I can

 

[The Catboy]

So I happen to be rather knowledgeable in this area because I spent 2 years trying to replace the Ak2i header. What I learned is that the header is basically a hacked ROM header where it launches the ROM and then that is redirected to the firmware for the cart. What I also learned is that the carts typically have 2MB onboard for the ROM header. You would need to to completely breakdown the ROM and redirect it to firmware and it does seem to be very specific ROMs that can be exploited. I wasn’t able to isolate how all of this worked. I did find out dumping the ROM will make a ROM the same size as the OG game but 98% of it is empty files. It seems the header holds the information for the ROM files and their sizes but not what’s on them.
That ramble aside, you can just use Retro’s files to bypass the timebomb. The timebomb was just the kernel, not the firmware
https://gbatemp.net/threads/retrogamefan-updates-releases.267243/
You can also use TWLMenu++ with either YSMenu from Retro’s files or nds-bootstrap
https://gbatemp.net/threads/ds-i-3d...-ds-i-games-and-ds-i-menu-replacement.472200/

 

[Takokeshi]

and you said there was already an app to flash the carts? the link you showed me was for the inner SD card, if I were to flash the rom as a firmware, that would permanently become a game cart for that ROM, correct? I want to make an app that I can push a ROM from my console into the flashcart instead of flashing the cart

No, it's not for the SD card. It flashes the chip on the cartridge with its firmware.