Today there was an independent release for a set of dump tools based on rudolph's dumper which now allows you to dump NDS roms perfectly including the header.
Regarding roms dumped with bad headers Bahamut had some information in the nfo for Der Bauernhof
"all the NDS releases after DSi launch are missing data. Old NDS dumpers skip the header after 0x200 though, many of the NDS games after DSi include data after 0x200."
Apparently all the old dump tools skip a small range of data that could be used to distinguish between classic NDS and DSi consoles near the beginning of the ROM. For those that want to backup games keeping as close as possible to a 1:1 dump should start using these new tools.
I will be sure to switch to this backup utility instead of using the older one.
So...in other words, does this mean that even if DSi mode was cracked an hour ago, 98% of the DSi-enhanced dumps wouldn't work in DSi mode anyway because of the missing header information?
Is there a means of using the 3in1 to backup >32MB *.nds? some kind of split-dump method? I've found the wifi/ftp solutions to be pretty sloooooow. Anyone care to suggest a good slot2 device?
I use an old SuperCard SD slot-2 cartridge that i've had for years and it's dumped everything just fine. You are only limited to the space on the SD card that you use inside it.
Is there a means of using the 3in1 to backup >32MB *.nds? some kind of split-dump method? I've found the wifi/ftp solutions to be pretty sloooooow. Anyone care to suggest a good slot2 device?
Excellent! I didn't realize it was able to copy/merge >32MB files with the 3in1. Tested a new dump backup and was able to verify that the resulting file matched the CRC32 of BAHAMUT's.
What program can you use to determine if the full header info was indeed created or not?
I'd like to know too.
What I've found is that the patching tools are dumping a fuller header than the unpatched tools but I don't know if that means the complete header is being dumped.
Doing a (quick and dirty) binary file comparison, I found the unpatched tools are zero-padding certain memory addresses. I've got a list of the addresses now.
I'm thinking these tools are good, though.
This post has been edited by windsur, Thu, February 25th, 2010 at 20:57