Hacking Creating new NDS gamecart backups

[charpsp20]

yeah, i got mine there in about a week or so. it's pretty cheap too. a Supercard CF might have worked for the storage except for the fact that it reboots the DS when inserted.

okay, so ive tried most of my games and thankfully, most of them work--about 90% of them. The only 2 stubborn ones are metroid prime hunters (like shinjis) and super mario 64 ds. even trying them in the m3 lite doesnt help. Big brain academy at first had a hard time with recognizing the header, but finally found it.

My setup has been a flashed DS phat, m3 lite with the wrg dumper, gba mp CF, and original DS cartridge. For saver files, ive been using reimoon with my supercard CF and then the m3 simply saver converter. Awhile ago, i believe i was even able to reload a m3 simply saver file back into the real ds cartridge, using one of the reinmoon versions and my supercard CF, something eepinator cant seem to do. Ill have to check if this is true of all the cartridges and savers.

Overall this has been a great success; its weird how hard it is too find info this topic on the net. If anyone knows how to getting working dumps for the ones i mentioned let me know.

Also, does anyone know the legalities of breaking encryption? (that's what the wrg dumper does right?) Even if this is a legally questionable, the laws seem too vague and what about the right of a person to back up software as long as he owns it?

 

[shinji257]

Actually you may want to take a look inside one of the game manual sometime regarding this. When you break encryption DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) rules kick in within the US. So it really isn't legal but this topic should be a strong resource for those that want to do it themselves. Rules depend on the country though so check your local laws as well.

 

[charpsp20]

Actually you may want to take a look inside one of the game manual sometime regarding this.  When you break encryption DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) rules kick in within the US.  So it really isn't legal but this topic should be a strong resource for those that want to do it themselves.  Rules depend on the country though so check your local laws as well.

Yeah, though of course nintendo will always side against backups. I wonder if that makes ripping dvds illegal since they are commercial too. Yet people still do it. And people can still backup music without trouble. Anyways, the law seems gray in this matter regardless of the DMCA since it takes away the right to own a personal backup. I guess as long as I dont pass the files to anyone else but myself, I should be okay.

 

[shinji257]

That is correct. DMCA makes breaking any type of copyright protection "illegal" and this includes DVDs and certain protected Audio CDs. I'm with you though. I think the DMCA law conflicts easily with Fair Use and I don't really follow it though. I have a copy of just about every DVD that I own and play that one on my DVD drives. The original is placed in a safe place.

 

[charpsp20]

I read on another forum about another possible source file of rom dumping. This would be great as the needed hardware
would probably be less than what we got going on with th wrg dumper. And if we're lucky, this will successfully dump the 10% of games that didnt dump right with wrg. If anyone has time, they could post their results of this new dumper here.


The links here:
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%...n&hl=en&ie=UTF8

 

[shinji257]

Nice find. I am trying it out right now. First I will use the game Planet Puzzle League as a test run to see how it goes. Check then delete the result file. Appears that this tool may be able to boot from slot 1 cards but will need to write to a slot 2 card anyways. The file uses dldi so will need to be patched with the proper file. In my case I used the M3 adapter DLDI patch file. Right away I noticed that it can do safe file backup and restore as well as nds cart backup. The initial tests will be on my flashed unit then I will try on the unflashed one.

EDIT: My test was successful so I know the program works. Doing Metroid Prime Hunters right now... Will check in the morning. Need sleep.

 

[shinji257]

An update here...

The DS finished the backup last night but I couldn't check it until this morning. This is the first program that was successfully able to backup Metroid Prime Hunters without issue.

Now I have moved to a more difficult scenario. Due to the way the program is setup it may be possible to backup a NDS game to a file using an unflashed unit. I will test on R4DS 1.09 (before auto-patching was implemented -- already tried 1.10) and on my M3 Perfect Lite using an off the shelf Action Replay DS as a NoPass.

The program works as follows

Boot program (It is an NDS application)
Remove slot 1 cart and insert cart to backup
Press R twice to select ROM Backup
Press B to do a backup
Press A to begin
Wait....

This program will not require you to re-insert the cart post-backup.

So far on my results of that test though...

R4DS w/ firmware 1.10
Fails -- gets stuck on loading file list since it is trying to do it from Slot 1. At this point a game has been inserted and the R4DS is no longer present.

M3 Perfect Lite w/ firmware v34 and using Action Replay DS
EDIT: Success -- Unflashed unit did backup using this combination of Metroid Prime Hunters which proves that a flashed unit is no longer required... Got one more test to do. Make note that a slot-2 will still likely to be required for the storage aspect. The below test is just to see if you can get the program to start properly on an R4DS. You can use an R4DS as the NoPass instead of the Action Replay DS above.
-- END EDIT

R4DS w/ firmware 1.09 using M3 Perfect Lite as storage
EDIT: Success -- Actually I didn't let it finish but it was definately working. The file was patched for M3SD (M3 Perfect Lite for me) and it was able to access the slot-2 cart I had inserted already for storage.

 

[sidneyyoung]

Use the wifi version on the r4...afaics it's slot-1 friendly

note it's fussy about ftp server setups.. use "bulletproof ftp server" it has a free trial period and works with this well.

 

[TeraS]

shinji, y dont u try with r4 1.11

 

[HBK]

shinji, y dont u try with r4 1.11

R4DS 1.11 has been confirmed to not work - freezes loading list just as 1.10.

 

[Saylient_Dreams]

I've been kind of following this, and I'm pretty intersted in dumping my own backups instead of resorting to search for the rom, and claiming that as a backup. The last couple of posts confused me a little. The link charpsp20 posted that goes to Rudolph's site, is that a dumper? Using that, what equipment do you need, do you still need a cf-based slot 2 to store the dump to? Also, how long does dumping a backup take? Thanks for the info.

 

[FAST6191]

It is a DLDI based dumper, I have used it a few times now on my EZ4 (flashme v7 modded old style DS).
Time: I backed up warioware touched (EU) at 32 megabytes, 1% every 2-3 seconds.

 

[shinji257]

Correct. In addition I have verified that it will work on an unflashed unit by successfully dumping Metroid Prime Hunters without issue. I used the Action Replay DS that you can get at your local game store as the NoPass (hold select while you turn on the DS) so it was not programmed or anything for that game.

@sidneyyoung
I'll give it a shot. I'll have to go back to the site and download it but the translation was not that great so I couldn't figure out how it worked out.
EDIT: Re-reading the site it says that it works slowly and probably due to network traffic limits rather than the program. How long did it take you to do one?

 

[shinji257]

shinji, y dont u try with r4 1.11


R4DS 1.11 has been confirmed to not work - freezes loading list just as 1.10.

Correct and that is because of the auto-patching so I am trying out 1.09 and seeing what will happen.

EDIT: Checked and it will work but you still need a slot-2 cart. I don't think it will be easily possible to do both launching the application and storing the backup on the same slot-1 cart without alot of swapping due to limited ram storage.

 

[charpsp20]

cool, much thanks to the other guy who posted that link on the other forum that i saw. My setup with the wrg dumper works fine mostly, but it was annoying that i had to switch cartridge bodies on my m3 lite to fit in my flashed DS phat, not too mention finding the elusive gbaMP. Well, I guess i can try working this with m3 simply and m3 lite sometime.

Now we need a good saver tool other than reinmoon (which works great already on the SC CF) that will work on either m3 simply/lite

Edit: Oh wait, this file seems to also manage saves. The question is will it be able to take an m3 simply save (512mb) and convert it back into a reg save (way less than 512mb) for the original cartridge. I know this worked great for reinmoon, but eepinator wouldnt do it as it would recognize the difference in saver file size.

 

[sidneyyoung]

@sidneyyoung
I'll give it a shot. I'll have to go back to the site and download it but the translation was not that great so I couldn't figure out how it worked out.
EDIT: Re-reading the site it says that it works slowly and probably due to network traffic limits rather than the program. How long did it take you to do one?

did you try the 'bulletproof ftp server' software to setup the ftp server on you're pc ? i tried others before and it wouldn't work... also i had to dldi the .nds file before it would read/ammend itself with my .ini settings (though i thought initially it wouldn't need dldi patching since it wasn't writing to the mem card..strange)

 

[charpsp20]

okay so this seems to work really well; both dumps of MPH and super mario 64 DS have correctly been dumped and seem to play normal, something wrg couldnt do. Not only that, but the save manager does seem to be able to auto convert 512mb m3 simply saves back into the original cartridge at least with new super mario bros just like reinmoon.

All you seem to need is a slot 2 card (like the m3 lite) and a nopassme (or slot 1 card acting as one like the m3 simply) just as shinji said. Just boot the dumper from slot 2. No flashed DS required, but dldi is necessary.

Wahoo!

 

[Saylient_Dreams]

This is interesting, I think I'll give it a try soon. So from what I'm reading, you run this dldi .nds file from a slot 2 based cart? Is there any possible chance that this can damage the DS? I'm planning on using my DS Phat, but I have an Ez4FDlx (lite size). I do have a Gameshark for the GBA and have been using that as a bridge to test things on my flashed DS Phat, thought it didn't work well with my new 3-in1, think it'll work for the dumper? Also, just wanted to verify, that I run this from slot 2, with the game I want to dump in slot 1. Thanks.

EDIT: I just saw the thread for this tool in the Ez-Flash subforum, I think my questions have been answered in that thread.

 

[shinji257]

@sidneyyoung
I'll give it a shot. I'll have to go back to the site and download it but the translation was not that great so I couldn't figure out how it worked out.
EDIT: Re-reading the site it says that it works slowly and probably due to network traffic limits rather than the program. How long did it take you to do one?



did you try the 'bulletproof ftp server' software to setup the ftp server on you're pc ? i tried others before and it wouldn't work... also i had to dldi the .nds file before it would read/ammend itself with my .ini settings (though i thought initially it wouldn't need dldi patching since it wasn't writing to the mem card..strange)

No. I still have not yet downloaded it to even try. I'll give it a go when I get a chance to do so. Right now a slot-2 based solution is more than acceptable and I can actually sell my flashed unit if I wanted to since I can do this all with my unflashed unit now.

 

[kazumi213]

okay so this seems to work really well; both dumps of MPH and super mario 64 DS have correctly been dumped and seem to play normal, something wrg couldnt do.

WRG's can correctly dump those titles with the right hardware. Specifically you must boot the dumper from a true GBA flashcart, not a slot-2 DS+GBA one which usually use some kind of loader. WRG's works exactly as stated on release nfo, nothing more, nothing less.

But it is interesting to know about this new dumper being able to work on unflashed consoles. Wi-Fi-based one seems useless at its current transfer rate (unless you don't own a DLDI-compatible slot-2 device). Also, I agree a slot-1-based dumper would be too cumbersome to operate.