DS Project : Carry all your games, old and new, at once!
Many of you have owned a device in the Game Boy. Some of you have been using these Game Boys since the system debuted with a Tetris cartridge in 1989. I am one of those people. I now own a Nintendo DS with a flash card that lets me store games on it and play from the card, rather than carrying around a collection of cartridges and changing every time I want to play a different game. I have a large collection of Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games as well which I wish to carry around in a similar fashion. The problem is that I have put countless hours into games over the years, and I also want to carry those save games. This article documents how to retrieve the save games from those cartridges, as well as how to play your old games on your DS.
Please bookmark this LJ as it will be updated as I have progress and I won't be making posts saying, "Hey! Update! Go check here!"
(At this point, I am assuming someone has a card to play Homebrew. I haven't written that part yet.)
Game Boy / Game Boy Color : Due to the voltage differences in GBA and GB/GBC cartridges, I do not see any way to plug those cartridges into your DS. Nintendo has further made it physically impossible to plug GB/GBC cartridges into a DS, and this seems to be to protect your cartridges as the DS does not have the voltage switch that the GBA systems did. However, I have found the emulator of choice, and you can use this to play your GB/GBC games. You unfortunately must find someone with a linker or other hardware device to allow you to back things up. Devices such as the XChanger and the E-Merger will let you do this. Searches for those might help you find those or better results.
I am still conducting research into whether a Game Shark will allow you to back up cartridges.
Then you want to use a program called "Lameboy" to run those games on your DS.
Resource : http://lameboy.nutki.com/
Game Boy Advance : INCOMPLETE
Someone named Rudolph has developed a tool which allows the owner of a DS to run the program from a Slot-1 (DS Cartridge Slot) Flash Card. This tool will copy the contents of a cartridge in the Slot-2 (GBA Cartridge Slot) to the Flash Card in Slot-1. Tested on Pokemon Emerald succesfully. For some GBA cartridges it creates a single ROM file as well as a SAV file with the SAV data.
Does NOT work on cartidges which use EEPROM instead of Flash Memory for the save file. Backup FAILED on Super Mario Advance.
Resource : http://www009.upp.so-net.ne.jp/rudolph/nds/Backup/
Nintendo DS :
NOTE : This is the method to back up your DS Cartridge saves if you use a Slot-1 DS Flashcard.
The application you require is called SendSav, and it does just that. When you load this program, it will tell you to remove your Flashcard and insert a cartridge. What will then happen is that it sends your save data over WiFi to your computer. 2 setup steps are required first.
1) Create a text file on your Flashcard at "/DATA/SETTINGS/savsender.conf" In this text file you will be storing two lines. The first line will be your IP Address. The second line will be a port of your choosing. It will look like this, only with all the # replaced by actual numbers.
###.###.###.###
####
2) You need to download and run a program called NetCat. NetCat will be your PC's client for interacting with your DS while you are running SavSender. Run NetCat with the following command. replacing #### with the port you chose above and "output.sav" with whatever you want the actual file to be called :
nc -l -p #### > Output.Sav
3) Now that this is done, you must boot up your DS and load SendSav. It will prompt you to switch cartridges and press A to continue, so do so. Do not touch anything until it says "Done". If NetCat has not closed once the DS has indiciated it is done, go to that window and press CTRL-C. You can run NetCat again with a different save file for a different cartridge, or just call it quits there.
4) Your SAV file may not be in a proper format for your DS Flashcard. There are a number of ways to convert a raw SAV file (what you have now) into something your Flashcard can use. I find the most comprehensive is located at Savegames Converter Website. Merely Browse to find your file, choose the first option (RAW Format) for source and the proper card for your target.
Resource: SendSav
Resource: NetCat
Resource: Savegames Converter Website
Summary so far:
Game Boy, Game Boy Color : Hardware Required
Game Boy Advance : Partial Results
Nintendo DS : SUCCESS
If you have any leads or suggestions, or test data of your own, PLEASE AIM, E-Mail, or Comment on this. This is something I seriously want to see through and will post elsewhere when it is complete.
Please bookmark this LJ as it will be updated as I have progress and I won't be making posts saying, "Hey! Update! Go check here!"
(At this point, I am assuming someone has a card to play Homebrew. I haven't written that part yet.)
Game Boy / Game Boy Color : Due to the voltage differences in GBA and GB/GBC cartridges, I do not see any way to plug those cartridges into your DS. Nintendo has further made it physically impossible to plug GB/GBC cartridges into a DS, and this seems to be to protect your cartridges as the DS does not have the voltage switch that the GBA systems did. However, I have found the emulator of choice, and you can use this to play your GB/GBC games. You unfortunately must find someone with a linker or other hardware device to allow you to back things up. Devices such as the XChanger and the E-Merger will let you do this. Searches for those might help you find those or better results.
I am still conducting research into whether a Game Shark will allow you to back up cartridges.
Then you want to use a program called "Lameboy" to run those games on your DS.
Resource : http://lameboy.nutki.com/
Game Boy Advance : INCOMPLETE
Someone named Rudolph has developed a tool which allows the owner of a DS to run the program from a Slot-1 (DS Cartridge Slot) Flash Card. This tool will copy the contents of a cartridge in the Slot-2 (GBA Cartridge Slot) to the Flash Card in Slot-1. Tested on Pokemon Emerald succesfully. For some GBA cartridges it creates a single ROM file as well as a SAV file with the SAV data.
Does NOT work on cartidges which use EEPROM instead of Flash Memory for the save file. Backup FAILED on Super Mario Advance.
Resource : http://www009.upp.so-net.ne.jp/rudolph/nds/Backup/
Nintendo DS :
NOTE : This is the method to back up your DS Cartridge saves if you use a Slot-1 DS Flashcard.
The application you require is called SendSav, and it does just that. When you load this program, it will tell you to remove your Flashcard and insert a cartridge. What will then happen is that it sends your save data over WiFi to your computer. 2 setup steps are required first.
1) Create a text file on your Flashcard at "/DATA/SETTINGS/savsender.conf" In this text file you will be storing two lines. The first line will be your IP Address. The second line will be a port of your choosing. It will look like this, only with all the # replaced by actual numbers.
###.###.###.###
####
2) You need to download and run a program called NetCat. NetCat will be your PC's client for interacting with your DS while you are running SavSender. Run NetCat with the following command. replacing #### with the port you chose above and "output.sav" with whatever you want the actual file to be called :
nc -l -p #### > Output.Sav
3) Now that this is done, you must boot up your DS and load SendSav. It will prompt you to switch cartridges and press A to continue, so do so. Do not touch anything until it says "Done". If NetCat has not closed once the DS has indiciated it is done, go to that window and press CTRL-C. You can run NetCat again with a different save file for a different cartridge, or just call it quits there.
4) Your SAV file may not be in a proper format for your DS Flashcard. There are a number of ways to convert a raw SAV file (what you have now) into something your Flashcard can use. I find the most comprehensive is located at Savegames Converter Website. Merely Browse to find your file, choose the first option (RAW Format) for source and the proper card for your target.
Resource: SendSav
Resource: NetCat
Resource: Savegames Converter Website
Summary so far:
Game Boy, Game Boy Color : Hardware Required
Game Boy Advance : Partial Results
Nintendo DS : SUCCESS
If you have any leads or suggestions, or test data of your own, PLEASE AIM, E-Mail, or Comment on this. This is something I seriously want to see through and will post elsewhere when it is complete.