The Open Source Cartridge Reader is a great diy project for dumping your own roms and saves. If you order a kit with the surface mount components already installed, it’s also a great beginner soldering project.

  • YuzuDrink@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    I built one of these a couple weekends back and have been blissfully extracting ROMs from my cartridge collection since then. I love it so much, and it’s a really solid design!

  • UnrealRealityX@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The closest thing I ever used that backed up actual hardware was a Playstation 1 card reader. At the time I was backing up game saves and porting them to the ps2 for emulation or something i forget exactly.

    It was wild to do something like that on your computer back then. A Sony memory card in your PC? Bonkers.

    • radostin04@pawb.social
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      10 months ago

      Most N64 games don’t actually use the controller pak, instead using their own battery saves

      • sebinspace@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        IIRC none of the games that require the expanded RAM module (DK64, OOT, Majora) actually utilize its RAM under normal conditions. For instance, DK64 only used it as a means to stave off a memory leak.

      • 91x@lemmy.sdf.org
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        10 months ago

        Hmmm, I still have my N64, all my old games, etc and could test. Do you know if there is a way for me to check the memorypak to see what games actually saved to it?

        Now that you mention it, I recall either OoT or MM saving to the cart directly.

        Edit: May have found my own answer:

        HOLD THE START BUTTON DOWN and turn your console on. Make sure to HOLD THE START BUTTON DOWN while it boots up. This will pull up the data management screen where you can view and delete your stored data on your memory card.

        Will check and report back.