Corrupted Cartridge Fixer Release

[TheCypherist]

Would like to say, this saved my copy of Pokemon Y. Tried pretty much everything but this is what worked!! Was a lil unstable still the first time so I ran it again and were good as new!

Gotta glue my cart back together now

 

[pivix]

Started to use this tool on my copy of omega ruby. I was worried that my save was gone, but I have backed it up with checkpoint and loaded it up with digital copy of a game (all my pokemons are fine and save is backed up). Now I started to run a tool and have lots of hash mismatch. Now at 8% I have 20k refresh count (is this bad?). I am curious how it will work out .
update:
After first run, the game started to run and read save. Played for 10 mins and error occurred while I was checking pokemons in box on PC. Will try to run check once again. This time after 8% I have 480 refresh count .

 

[ralac]

Adding a second statistic; this time a full success! Had a copy of Pokemon Y that failed verification. I ran this fixer, and it said that the corruption was fixed. When I checked with the verify tool though, it failed. Ultimately ran the fixer 7 or 8 times, with each time the fixer claiming it was fixed. The last time, the verify tool agreed with the fixer that it was indeed fixed.

 

[skawo]

The fixer just says it "finished" not that the corruption was fixed :v
There's no way to know until you run verify.

Anyway, added.

 

[Edison_was_a_theif]

Working on a pokemon omega ruby that does not load and give the "Game Cart cannot be read." error. An interesting note is that the cartridge icon shows up fine, but doesn't display the animated title on the top screen when hovering over it. I already tried the solder reflow on the chip per the Voultar video and now running the v1.2 of the tool.

Still on the ROMFS section and at 1 million refreshes total so far at 0%. I read that someone here ran this for a couple weeks and it eventually had a positive effect, so I might be doing the same but will provide updates throughout. I wonder if I should run the largechunk.firm first until that finishes a few times, then switch to the v1.2 which checks every chunk?

Whether this works or not, huge kudos to you Skawo for putting together an awesome tool and being extremely responsive to those in this forum.

 

[skawo]

If you plan on running for a long time, close the 3DS; the process should continue even when closed and there's no need to strain the screen.

 

[Edison_was_a_theif]

If you plan on running for a long time, close the 3DS; the process should continue even when closed and there's no need to strain the screen.

OMG, thanks for the tip. I'm glad I just saw this.

Post automatically merged: Dec 7, 2023

day 1 update: 13 million refreshes so far. Still on ROMFS and still at 0%. I am occasionally skipping some blocks that seem to never complete, but for the most part I allow tens of thousands of refreshes before I skip anything. It's been running since yesterday.

I won't make an update every day at this point, but every time something happens or I change something. For now, I'm just going to leave it running.

 

[Edison_was_a_theif]

I ran it for about a week under the regular v1.2 refresh program and it got up to 261 million refreshes. I did start to see a little sliver of the progress bar, but it never reached 1%. Two days ago, I accidentally cancelled the progress while I was skipping chunks and decided to start it up again while holding select. Today, I noticed my 3ds froze during this process at around 391 million refreshes. After rebooting, the system no longer recognizes the game cart at all from GM9 to the main OS.

I guess it was just too far gone already. If you have any ideas, let me know. I'll probably keep the cart for experiments.

 

[skawo]

Yeah, that unfortunately sounds like it's too far gone, unless the reflow went awry somehow. Sorry :c

 

[linuxares]

I ran it for about a week under the regular v1.2 refresh program and it got up to 261 million refreshes. I did start to see a little sliver of the progress bar, but it never reached 1%. Two days ago, I accidentally cancelled the progress while I was skipping chunks and decided to start it up again while holding select. Today, I noticed my 3ds froze during this process at around 391 million refreshes. After rebooting, the system no longer recognizes the game cart at all from GM9 to the main OS.

I guess it was just too far gone already. If you have any ideas, let me know. I'll probably keep the cart for experiments.

Got a solder iron?

 

[skawo]

He already tried the reflow method.

 

[Edison_was_a_theif]

Yeah, I did try the reflow and afterwards it still showed up when I slotted it into the DS, but gave the same error of gamecart could not be read. Thanks for the suggestion.

It's crazy to me that this is a problem in the first place. We don't have this issue with older gameboy or GBA games, only the battery is the issue with those. Is this a way of Nintendo building in planned obsolescence if you don't play a game for long enough?

 

[Kwyjor]

It's crazy to me that this is a problem in the first place. We don't have this issue with older gameboy or GBA games, only the battery is the issue with those. Is this a way of Nintendo building in planned obsolescence if you don't play a game for long enough?

Don't you have a lot of other cartridges that are still working perfectly? If this was really a widespread problem with a lot of cartridges, there would be a lot more news about it. But for some reason Pokemon ORAS catridges are weirdly susceptible.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Previous console games used ROM (with few exceptions) which lasts almost forever (electron migration will eventually destroy them all). Since 3DS they cheaped out and switched to NAND flash and this shows now. It would not be a huge deal if their refresh mechanism would be more sophisticated. Then the controller would automatically refresh any data before it can even corrupt in the first place.

In the gigaleaks there was a datasheet for the "ROM" chips which states they planned for a data retention time of 10 years.

 

[Kwyjor]

It would not be a huge deal if their refresh mechanism would be more sophisticated. Then the controller would automatically refresh any data before it can even corrupt in the first place.

Are you suggesting it should somehow refresh data without being inserted in the console..?

 

[ghjfdtg]

No. At runtime obviously.

 

[Laier]

Hi there skawo, made an account just to thank you. Bought a bundle of games for pretty cheap (RM200) and included in the bundle was a copy of alpha sapphire. First time tried playing it, and would instantly give me the sango 2, errdisplay error. Googled it, and it lead me to this thread. Fortunately, my 3ds was already homebrewed and went to work immediately. After a few deep fixes (Select button fix) and a normal fix. Was finally able to verify the game successfully.

The first few times, it would always fail instantly. Got it to verify successfully, just a few mins ago. So if any of you guys are like me, give it a few times before the fix finally sticks.

The seller must have thought they were unloading a broken copy of the game to me,haha. Frick them, and thanks to you, I got away on top. If you're ever in Kuching, dinners on me!

 

[DSoryu]

I managed to fix my OoT copy with this, I only got 1 error count, tysm!

Spoiler

 

[Nielssie0420]

Hey there! I wanted to try this on my copy of Pokemon Y, however (and it might just be me being stupid here) I can't find the "fix cartridge corruption" option under the "NCSD image options" menu
I copied the file to the specified luna folder as well so idk if I did anything wrong

 

[skawo]

Sounds like you're getting into regular godmode and not this one?
Can you post a screenshot of where you placed the file?