Homebrew Is it possible to back up save data to PC from cartridges?

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
Hi. For the Homebrew on Wii it's possible to do this for Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, ACCF, etc. using a save game extractor and installer. Is it possible to do this with homebrew on the DS?
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
It is. For a DS/DS lite you have a few options.

If you don't have a 3 in 1 or older GBA slot thing with DS homebrew support then you have various flavours of wifi save dumping tools. It will require you to have your DS on wifi (wep or no security) or some flavour of access point set up for it.
https://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/applications/download-nds-backup-tool-wifi-0-31f-f2433.html
http://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-dump-your-own-3ds-ds-games-saves.274290/ covers usage.

It won't work on a DSi or 3ds as you can not remove and insert cards without it detecting it. I am not sure if there is anything for the 3ds right now in terms of 3ds homebrew though.

You can also buy a device which connects to your USB port and allows you to dump things. Most common is the NDS backup Adapter+, though they seem to be going for quite a bit these days.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RedRose30

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
Thanks for the responses. I was thinking about getting the DS adapter, but I heard that it doesn't work on Windows 10. Is this true?
 

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
It is. For a DS/DS lite you have a few options.

If you don't have a 3 in 1 or older GBA slot thing with DS homebrew support then you have various flavours of wifi save dumping tools. It will require you to have your DS on wifi (wep or no security) or some flavour of access point set up for it.
https://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/applications/download-nds-backup-tool-wifi-0-31f-f2433.html
http://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-dump-your-own-3ds-ds-games-saves.274290/ covers usage.

It won't work on a DSi or 3ds as you can not remove and insert cards without it detecting it. I am not sure if there is anything for the 3ds right now in terms of 3ds homebrew though.

You can also buy a device which connects to your USB port and allows you to dump things. Most common is the NDS backup Adapter+, though they seem to be going for quite a bit these days.

With the NDS backup tool, you said I need wifi, but the DS no longer has wifi. So could I still use it somehow or no?

And is there any other device to dump data other than the NDS backup adapter? There was someone on Amazon who said it does not work with windows 10, which I have :( Do the other devices work with windows 10? I would prefer doing that than using homebrew in case something goes wrong.
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
With the NDS backup tool, you said I need wifi, but the DS no longer has wifi. So could I still use it somehow or no?

And is there any other device to dump data other than the NDS backup adapter? There was someone on Amazon who said it does not work with windows 10, which I have :( Do the other devices work with windows 10? I would prefer doing that than using homebrew in case something goes wrong.

Most commercial games no longer have online support. Anything that uses your local network, a server you make, web services (assuming the API has not changed) or possibly if people still have their homebrew servers up will work fine -- one of the earlier things in DS homebrew was people figuring out the wifi hardware so we could have network based homebrew..

As this is FTP on your local network then it will work just as well as it ever did. You might have trouble finding a router that is secured with WEP or has no encryption but get that sorted and it will go fine.

What do you imagine will go wrong anyway? I have no idea on windows 10 and the adapter stuff though, not sure why it would not work as plenty of people had it working on older versions of windows and nothing really should have changed there.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RedRose30

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
Most commercial games no longer have online support. Anything that uses your local network, a server you make, web services (assuming the API has not changed) or possibly if people still have their homebrew servers up will work fine -- one of the earlier things in DS homebrew was people figuring out the wifi hardware so we could have network based homebrew..

As this is FTP on your local network then it will work just as well as it ever did. You might have trouble finding a router that is secured with WEP or has no encryption but get that sorted and it will go fine.

What do you imagine will go wrong anyway? I have no idea on windows 10 and the adapter stuff though, not sure why it would not work as plenty of people had it working on older versions of windows and nothing really should have changed there.

Thanks for the response! I don't really think anything would go wrong, it's just that my friend said I could try hacking his original DS since I don't have one, and I don't want to stupidly brick it. If I have to I'll probably just buy my own. But since the adapter is cheaper, I'd rather use that. There were people posting questions and reviews on Amazon though about how it was hard getting it to work on Windows 7, and then there was one review I remember reading saying it doesn't work with Windows 10 at all. I just want to see if that's actually true or not. If it really does work, I will buy it :)
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
It is hard to brick a DS. Messing up flashing the firmware, be it with flashme or if you can find one of the trojans*, is the only way to brick it really and that is not going to happen.

*I usually regret mentioning those as they are hard to find (I doubt I could find them if I wanted them, at least not without asking someone), most virus scanners will detect them and if you find your stuff from sensible sources it will be fine.

On amazon reviews I am never the greatest fan of them as most I ever see have very odd approaches to the world. Anyway many people had them and used them to get saves and whatever else, again though I don't know the current setup.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RedRose30

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
If there's many people who have been able to use the adapter, I guess I will try it. If it doesn't work, I will try homebrew since you said it's really hard to brick.

Thanks for your help! I appreciate it :)
 

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
Sorry but I just have a couple of more questions. If I use wifi to dump my saves, it definitely doesn't require homebrew? And if I do dump them, would it be possible to use the same method to put the save from my PC back to my original cartridge? Or is it a one way trip for saves?
 

RedRose30

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
439
Trophies
0
XP
506
Country
United States
I read it and it doesn't sound like it needs homebrew. Fast6191 also said this.

If you don't have a 3 in 1 or older GBA slot thing with DS homebrew support then you have various flavours of wifi save dumping tools.

But I just want to make absolute sure. That, and I want to put my saves back on the cartridges.
 

Sonic Angel Knight

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 27, 2016
Messages
14,395
Trophies
1
Location
New York
XP
12,890
Country
United States
I read it and it doesn't sound like it needs homebrew. Fast6191 also said this.



But I just want to make absolute sure. That, and I want to put my saves back on the cartridges.
I mean have you looked at the program to see if it does? He posted links about how to do it right? I am sure there is a way if you transfer save from game, you can get it back.
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
Short rundown of the available methods. Again http://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-dump-your-own-3ds-ds-games-saves.274290/ has more for some of them.
Ancient.
Old GBA slot flash carts with SRAM. Run some DS homebrew off this and it will dump it to the GBA cart SRAM and allow you to assemble it back together later.
Don't do this, I mention it mainly so if you go searching and see something you don't spend too much time contemplating it.

GBA slot with DS homebrew and DLDI.
Originally the EZ4 was the cart of choice for many here as it was readily available but the newer loaders and new batches/models do not have this.
Rudolph's dumping tools are the ones of choice for most people here.

DS slot flash cart with EZ 3 in 1.
The protocols to handle the GBA slot EZ 3 in 1 are known so you can run a DS homebrew program from a DS flash cart, eject the flash cart and insert a normal game before dumping it.
You will need a DS slot cart for this. Technically you could have another means to launch homebrew and then write to it but you won't have such means. Any DS slot flash cart will probably do here so get one of the older R4i things that does not work on current dsi/3ds models as they go cheap, or buy a good DS flash cart.

DS/DS lite with flash cart and wifi.
In this you run a DS program from anything you have that runs it. Insert your game into the DS slot and it sends the ROM/save to a FTP server or in some cases netcat.

Other than the ancient stuff there are two main groups of programs people use
1) Rudolph's dumpers. These have more polished GUIs and do saves more readily.
2) Wood dumpers. These dump newer ROMs more accurately, though nobody cares as the thing that is missed with Rudolph's is just a pointless part of the header ( https://hackmii.com/2010/02/lawsuit-coming-in-3-2-1/ covers the difference with newer games). Not sure what goes right now for saves or some of the other methods.

Above it would now seem that the 3ds, by virtue of having a standalone custom firmware*, has the ability to grab saves and the like.

*technically there was a custom firmware for the DS with some measure of cart bothering but it is not worth it when you have flash carts instead.

Finally there are PC based devices to handle it, I suppose there are also action replays but nobody cares about those.
Anyway the NDS backup Adapter family is the more common one. The plus model doing the pokemon gold and silver remakes (the pokewalker thing they came with was unique in DS game carts and abused the save pins to have IR communications), you can mod a cart to bypass this and there are also special versions of dumping tools to handle it for some of the other means.
I don't know what means you have right now if you are familiar with soldering iron. It is mainly SPI (a standard chip to chip communication protocol) so it should not require anything too exotic http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#dscartridgeioports
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
    SylverReZ @ SylverReZ: @salazarcosplay, Morning