How to do RAM dump of DS cartridge? (trying to extract save from repro cart)

[zoogie]

> Do you think I should take the dump before doing all that. or after the first softreset?

Try before first and we'll go from there.

 

[TheMismatcher]

> Do you think I should take the dump before doing all that. or after the first softreset?

Try before first and we'll go from there.

Here is I believe the newly dumped fcram.mem following your instructions

https://www.dropbox.com/s/532xfo36s1n1rpx/fcram.mem?dl=0

 

[TheMismatcher]

> Do you think I should take the dump before doing all that. or after the first softreset?

Try before first and we'll go from there.

and here is the dsiram.bin after using your script

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ig6zft7e31bq1hu/dsiram.bin?dl=0

 

[Pk11]

and here is the dsiram.bin after using your script

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ig6zft7e31bq1hu/dsiram.bin?dl=0

This time it seems it starts at 0x27C228, 100 bytes earlier in the file.

It loaded in Pokémon Chest, this time I don't see any corrupted box Pokémon, but the trainer and party data seems to all be corrupted. I've attached the save after saving it with Pokémon Chest.

Edit: Loading this one in melonDS I get "The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.", so it does recognize the save but also thinks it's too far broken even with the (presumably) checksum fixes from Pokémon Chest.

 

[TheMismatcher]

This time it seems it starts at 0x27C228, 100 bytes earlier in the file.

It loaded in Pokémon Chest, this time I don't see any corrupted box Pokémon, but the trainer and party data seems to all be corrupted. I've attached the save after saving it with Pokémon Chest.

Edit: Loading this one in melonDS I get "The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.", so it does recognize the save but also thinks it's too far broken even with the (presumably) checksum fixes from Pokémon Chest.

Yeah I can't get that to load in PKHEX- Though to be fair, I couldn't get the other ones to open in pkhex either without saving in game first.

I can take a few more dumps in various ways

 

[TheMismatcher]

This time it seems it starts at 0x27C228, 100 bytes earlier in the file.

It loaded in Pokémon Chest, this time I don't see any corrupted box Pokémon, but the trainer and party data seems to all be corrupted. I've attached the save after saving it with Pokémon Chest.

Edit: Loading this one in melonDS I get "The save file will be erased due to corruption or damage.", so it does recognize the save but also thinks it's too far broken even with the (presumably) checksum fixes from Pokémon Chest.

do you know the feasibility of copying the hex for like the uncorrupted trainer data from one sav and pasting it over the corrupted trainer data in the other? assuming you know the offset and everything?

 

[TheMismatcher]

Here is another dump. Done with the new game and soft reset beforehand, but on the menu

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dezyu2dye6ovfq/dsiram.bin?dl=0

Would saving in a different location potentially help? In all these saves I am surfing in a route. I know when doing rng manip it is better to be in a more "quiet" area with less calls on the RNG or anything like that, although considering these dumps are from the menu before a save is loaded I suppose it probably won't matter.

In a personal note I spent the last couple hours filling out all the forms for a lost passport then found mine. oof

 

[TheMismatcher]

For good measure, here's one dumped form my other homebrewed 3ds (not n3ds)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ubvp9o1g4s2ph44/dsiram.bin?dl=0

I'm going to bed now, be back tomorrow. I got PKMN chest working! So I'll play with that

 

[Gamemaster1379]

Yeah I'm a tad nervous about story or other data corruption which might not be immediately apparent. I'll try doing as many different things in game as I can to test. There's a lot of potential avenues of corruption though- phone numbers, battle frontier, battled trainers...

I tried opening in PkHex and it shows far more pokemon as corrupted and unreadable then the other programs I've tried (though it's still 0-5 per box). I don't know if that's a good thing as it identifies more potentially bad pokemon or if PkHex can't read pokemon that would function normally

Honestly not surprised. Given it loaded at all, you're making a fair amount of progress. PkHex can also modify, so what you may have to do is take that save and then reconstruct Pokemon by hand by looking at them in game from the originally bugged cart.

 

[TheMismatcher]

I just wanted to thank everyone so much for all their help! Especially @zoogie and @Pk11 ! I would have said so earlier but just got back from a week long trip with no wifi/ cellular. It took a few times of loading and saving in game and saving using pokemon chest and pkhex but everything seems to be working! Ultimately only 4 pokemon were corrupted or had a corrupted (but stable?) item, so I traded over non corrupted versions of them from the repro cart, got their data, then injected them, then deleted the corrupted pokemon in Pokemon Chest. In the end the only things I lost were my battle video, my battle hall data and my hall of fame data, a small price to pay for everything else that works so much better now. At first I got a few "the save file corrupted, the previous file will be loaded" but it's been running smoothly now for a week with no crashes or issues.

I can play voltorb flip, one of my favorite things to do as a kid, without the game crashing now! Thanks again to everyone who helped out, I really thought this may be impossible but so many people came together to help me find a solution. The internet is great.

 

[Keitho]

Hey guys want to ask also regarding a repro platinum save file - my game doesnt boot on 3ds but i can extract a file from gm9 and doesnt work in emulators even though the length is kinda the same but 1000 times smaller (MB to KB) - checkpoint does recognize the game but only gets a 512B file instead of a 512KB file
I also tried to install this 128KB file with nds forwarder and get a Platinum logo but still doenst start - then went into the virtual ram - at least from the file size the arm9ext, axiwram and dsp could be a potential save file with 512KB, but I dont know
could that be potentially it? (didnt work on desmume)

Ok basicallay this was obtained from Checkpoint haha:
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