Arduino based Nintendo DS savegame hardware tool
dsaver is a hardware solution to dump and modify Nintendo DS cartridges savegames. It is based on the popular and extended Arduino board; it works perfectly on clone and unofficial boards.
to build a dsaver device compatible with the code provided in the ARDUINO folder you will need:
- Arduino board, official or clone (ie: freaduino)
- Nintendo DS slot 1 header
- Jumper Wires
- (optional)(recommennded) i2c oled display
| Arduino | Slot 1 | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PIN 13 (ICSP) | 2 | CLK |
| PIN 10 (ICSP) | 6 | CS (or SS) |
| Any VCC 3.3v | 8 | VCC 3.3v |
| PIN 11 MOSI | 15 (MISO) | *** |
| PIN 12 MISO | 16 (MOSI) | *** |
| Any GND | 17 | GND |
- Arduino PIN 11 is MOSI and should be connected to pin 15 of the slot1 (MISO)
- Arduino PIN 12 is MISO and should be connected to pin 15 of the slot1 (MOSI)
If you don't understand why it is this way check the SPI Protocol or the dsaver writeup
Provided in this repository you will find all software required to build a dsaver device:
- ARDUINO : C code to be flashed on the board.
.ino.hand.cppfiles. - PC : File
dsaver.pycontains python3 data receiver for the PC side.
dsaver.py requires PySerial:
- pip3 install pyserial
dsaver.ino requires U8g2lib and U8x8lib for OLED support
- #include <U8g2lib.h>
- #include <U8x8lib.h>
- Not really an issue, but actually dsaver has only been tested with 64kb carts
- Due to the different clock domains (SPI: 4MHz / UART: 115200 b/s) dsaver uses the OLED writing procedures to balance processor usage. This balancing has a very low rate of failure, but sometimes one (1) byte of data at the end of the file could be lost.