Hacking Dumping GBA VC .gba files

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Hking0036

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I have a number of decrypted VC dumps that I've been attempting to dump because I want to see if there's any differences between them, so I've been trying to dump GBA VC to no avail. I first tried to look at the alldata.bin file in hex, but there wasn't anything there of insight. I got some advice to use TCPGecko while the game was running because the rom is copied into ram, so I loaded them through loadiine with PyGecko on and did a memory dump of region 10000000 to 50000000 for a series of different games. These would crash because I think 50000000 is out of bounds, but I'd still get something out of it. The first I tried was F-Zero Maximum Velocity, and these were my results:

Original US Dump:
FSzrhLe.png


My Dump Attempt:
FCnrFAU.png

Clearly the header was wrong so the dump was a no-go. Next I tried doing Mega Man & Bass:

Comparison:
72dEP1H.png

GBATA Comparison:
FP6doAU.png
This time was obviously a lot closer, to the point where the headers almost match, the save type isn't documented but other than that it's a lot closer than what I had before, and MGBA will actually show a boot screen (though it'll just loop endlessly). My next thought was to try and make a dump of Super Mario Advance 4/Super Mario Bros. 3, and to reduce the point it dumps to, because there's a known good VC rom to compare it against to check, and I figured if I could get a cleaner (not crashing the wii u) dump I might get better info. I tried 3 different dumps of SMA4 and every time I get a different checksum, but the header is still screwed up in about the same way:

HxD:
fWQSeMY.png


GBATA:
rRKxNUO.png
For some reason, my dumps produce a correct title, and a serial for the J rom despite the fact I'm attempting to dump a US version (accompanied by the fact that it's in english on the actual wii u itself). Additionally, there's no save type which seems to be normal and the CRC32 changes every single time.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong because I know these can and have happened, but I can't nail it down. Is the RAM changing while I'm trying to dump it breaking these dumps? If so, how can I mitigate this from happening? Any advice would be appreciated. I'm not a genius on the matter (obviously) but I'm a man on a mission and at this point I've put enough time and effort in to the point where I'm dedicated to it. Any advice is appreciated.

EDIT: I've found a much better way of doing this, and realized I just wasted an entire evening.

Using this python script you can easily pull the rom directly from /content/alldata.bin when you have a decrypted dump available. One of the bundled dependencies has a syntax error, just replace this file and you're set. I'll probably make a guide later.
 
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