Hardware Turning a Flashcart into a Gameshark?

[Aganar]

I do apologize if this has been asked before, however I did do a search and found nothing answering my particular question.

Been using a DSTT flash cart on my DS-Lite for awhile now, which has been working rather nicely. I'm particularly fond of the built-in cheating device for my DS roms.

However, alot of the games I originally loaded onto the card I have since bought legitimately (because I only pirate to try the game out or if it's ridiculously hard to find). Owning them for real is nice, but it unfortunately means I lose whatever saves I had worked up to on the ROMs, and the ability to cheat (nice feature for those grind-heavy RPG's, especially if I'm going to end up playing through the game again).

Which makes me wonder: we have software that can be loaded onto Slot-1 devices to interact with Slot-2 games. Is the reverse possible? I presume it would be to an extent, since the flash carts can act as expanded RAM slots. Is there some way, if you had a slot-2 flash cart, that you could load a Gameshark software of some kind onto it that would boot and then boot the cartridge in slot-1?

Basically, I'm asking if it's possible (and if so, if a program already exists) to basically turn a slot-2/GBA flash cart into an Action Replay DS, to avoid actually having to buy one (since buying a slot-2 flash device would presumably be cheaper and.or more versatile in its functions).

 

[DanTheManMS]

It's not possible to do anything to the DS hardware (slot-1, wifi, etc) while in GBA mode. However, what you're looking for actually already exists in the form of a DS homebrew program called NitroHax. Load NitroHax, choose the cheats you want to enable, eject your DSTT when prompted and insert the DS game. Voila, instant ARDS codes applied to the game. I haven't used the program myself since a very early version, so I'm not entirely sure how to get the cheat files into a format NitroHax can use (XML I think?), but it shouldn't be too hard to find some guides or tutorials on the net.

While you're at it, look into a program called Rudolph's NDS Backup Tool wifi version. It's a bit tricky to set up (involves running an FTP server) but it will let you inject your save files into official game cartridges. No need to restart the whole game just for doing The Right Thing by buying the real cartridge. There's a guide at http://www.monroeworld.com/myfaq/index.php...&artlang=en but I'm sure there are others elsewhere you can look to as well.

 

[em2241992]

I don't know for sure, what I do is the the backup tool, cheat on an emulator and inject the save for both nds and gba games, works perfectly, and if you own the game, just create a backup and use that, if you ever wanna use the real one inject the save and you're good to go.

 

[Aganar]

Nice! I will definitely look into those.

While we're on the topic, what if I wanted to backup saves of legit GBA carts? I'm aware, for instance, that there are slot-1 homebrew programs that can interact with slot-2 flashcarts and make a backup of the save data on the slot-1 microSD card (usually as dump.bin or something, IIRC). Could the same be applied, just on a real cartridge?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[ricera10]

Cart Save

It's under GBA Game Save backup utility

 

[DanTheManMS]

Rudolph's GBA Backup Tool is a DS homebrew program that lets you both dump and restore save files to/from official GBA cartridges, and should be run from a slot-1 device. Cart_save, which ricera10 posted, is a GBA-side program that does the same thing, running from slot-2 instead. With cart_save, you have to swap cartridges around to accomplish the task (launch program, eject slot-2 device, insert GBA cartridge, dump save file, swap back to slot-2 device to write the dumped data to a file).

I have a quick tutorial video of cart_save up at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg53I5RUkH4 that covers dumping the save file, but restoring it follows basically the same steps.

 

[Aganar]

Many thanks! If only I had known about this before my Tactics Ogre cart (which was a bootleg, as I later discovered) was wiped.

EDIT: NitroHax loads the codes properly, but then when it comes time for me to actually put a GBA cart in, the program freezes.

 

[DanTheManMS]

NitroHax is for DS games. I thought that's what you were looking for.

Load codes, eject your slot-1 device, insert DS game cartridge, play DS game with cheats.

 

[Aganar]

DS Card, that's what I meant to type. >_< Having trouble with the GBA Backup Tool as well in another topic. That's why the typo.

Anyway. Here's what happens:
1. I load up my DSTT card on the DSLite.
2. Select NitroHax.
3. Load the (heavily butchered--I couldn't even fit cheats for all of the games I own onto it!) xml cheats file.
4. "Loading codes" screen sits there for about twenty seconds.
5. "Loaded codes. You can remove your flash card. Remove DS Card" screen shows up.
6. I remove the flash card. When I click down on the flash card (to unhinge the spring, or whatever), it says "Insert cart." Once I've finished pulling it out, however, it immediately goes to the "Select Cheats" menu on the bottom screen. It appears to have skipped the part where it actually reads what's inside slot-1.
7. I put a game in.
8. I select a game from the cheats menu. It displays the game's name twice (on one line and again on the line below it), then freezes. Can no longer navigate.

EDIT: Tried again, being careful how I ejected the flash cart. When it said "Insert cart.", I put one in and nothing happened. I then ejected and reseated it, and it then took me to the game's cheat page (which I presume means it read it properly). I was able to navigate around the main cheat menu (such as "Misc. Codes", "Arcade Codes", "Backlight Codes", etc.), but opening up any of the nested folders resulted in the thing freezing.

I'm beginning to think this isn't a very well-made program...

 

[DanTheManMS]

Perhaps it just doesn't like the DSTT or something. I'm not really sure, to be honest. =/

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

I read somewhere NitroHax didn't work with the DSTT, but I could be wrong.

 

[Aganar]

Just as an update (maybe future help for other DSTT users), the problem seems to be with nested folders. That is to say, the "official" cheat list XML file will contain codes in file trees, such that you'll select "Chrono Trigger", and there will then be several folders, like "Misc Codes", "Character Codes", "Backlight Codes", etc. NitroHax seems to freeze on me, most of the time (some games freeze when I open their folder at all, and then some early games, like Feel the Magic and Trauma Center, strangely work without problem) from trying to open these folders within folders. With that in mind, I tried merely flushing the codes I wanted to the game's root menu (that is to say, I merely moved the 'Max cash' code from the "Misc Codes" subfolder up to just the base "Chrono Trigger" folder, using a cheat editor), and I was able to toggle them and start the game without it freezing. This, oddly enough, has worked.

There are a few games in which the codes don't seem to be doing anything, even though I can toggle them and start the game without problem, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it might simply be inaccurate codes.

No idea why either NitroHax or DSTT hates nested folders. Go figure.

 

[cracker]

Yeah NitroHax won't work with flashcarts. It was designed this way on purpose by the author since they don't condone usage of backups... Use DSATM instead. It can be found in my sig.

 

[Aganar]

But, I'm trying to cheat on real carts? The only reason I'm using a flash card is to avoid having to plop down $25 for an Action Replay DS--the flash cart only runs the program. I don't know what you mean by NitroHax being "designed" not to work with flash carts. How else would you execute the program?

Perhaps you're under the assumption I'm trying to use Nitrohax to cheat on NDS roms stored on the slot-1 card? I'm not--and even then that would be silly, since the DSTT Firmware has a built-in cheat function and database file.

 

[cracker]

Urggggh... Well you did say a lot of the games that you bought originals of were loaded on your cart so I assumed that that was the case... Since NitroHax isn't working you will either need to buy a legit ARDS cart or play the game off of your flashcart with the built-in cheat engine or DSATM.

 

[Aganar]

But in the post right above your original I just said I actually got it working. Why must you dull my triumph like this?

 

[cracker]

Doh sorry. My bad. I skipped to conclusions and didn't read every reply thoroughly.