This tutorial will teach you how to create roms of Nintendo DS game cartridges you own. The end result will be you have a clean rom of your Nintendo DS game which can be used on an emulator, or on an Nintendo DS flashcard for convenience. Creating a rom of your Nintendo DS game is easy enough to do, however because the Nintendo DS is 12 years old it's very likely your home wireless network will be using security which is not compatible with the Nintendo DS, which does complicate the process a bit. I will do my best to try and assist you with lowering your wireless network security so you can get your Nintendo DS connected. However because 1000's of different routers / home networks setup combinations are out there all I can do is try guide you the best I can. This is why knowledge of your home network setup, along with some networking knowledge will be a great advantage for following this tutorial. Please keep the following in mind before progressing: You will need a DS flashcard, any Slot 1 DS flashcard you purchase today will be capable of running homebrew apps. The DS can only connect to WEP secured wireless networks, however the default security on routers today is WPA2, which is incompatible with the Nintendo DS. The DSi / 3DS support newer network security, however DS homebrew and DS games can still only support WEP secured wireless networks, so even if you're using a newer DS console. You still need a WEP secured wireless network regardless. WEP security is insecure and can be cracked very easily, so be sure to change your wireless network security back after following this tutorial. It's very unlikely the people living next door to you know how to crack WEP wireless security, or even know anything about wireless network security. You should be pretty safe lowering your network security for the purpose of this tutorial, i'm simply been responsible and warning you why you should switch the security back to WPA2 after you have finished. Change Your Wireless Network Security To WEP This is easy to do, however hard to explain as so many different home networking setups exist, for the sake of convenience when changing wireless network settings on your home router i'd recommend doing so from a computer connected directly to your router via Ethernet (wired). If you are doing so from a wireless connected computer once you change the security settings you will be disconnected from your home network and have to re connect the computer. Most home routers have a web interface which allows you to configure various settings, if you are unsure of how to connect to your routers web interface do the following. Open a command prompt and type "ipconfig /all" without the quotations This will show you the Default Gateway and DHCP Server IP address, this is usually the IP address of the router on your home network. As you can see on my home network this is 192.168.1.1 Now we know the IP address of your router, using your web browser you can open up its configuration page, do to this simply go to http://192.168.1.1/ (or the ip address you found) in your web browser. You will then be asked to log on to your routers configuration page, for example this is my routers web interface below: Once logged in you need to look for your Wireless security settings and change the security type to WEP: WEP Keys (aka wireless passwords) have to be 26 hexadecimal characters long, in the example below i used: 12345678912345678912345678 Once you have changed the security to WEP and entered a WEP key you can save your settings, remember all your Wireless devices will no longer connect to your network unless you connect them again or change the security / password back to what it originally was. Setting Up A WEP Wireless Connection On the Nintendo DS: You either want to load a game or a rom of a game which supports Nintendo WiFi connection, for this tutorial we will use Mario Kart 7, however any Nintendo WiFi connection enabled game will allow you to do this. Load your game as normal and go to Nintendo WiFi Connection Settings: Click on Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Settings: Choose a free connection profile to setup the WiFi connection on: Now search for an access point: The DS will display the wireless networks it's in range of Digiex.net is my WPA 2 secured wireless network, the padlock is grey as the DS is not able to connect to this network. Digiex.net Legacy is my WEP secured wireless network which the DS can connect to, the padlock is red, meaning the DS can connect, however I need to enter the network key: This is what happens when you try to connect to a wireless network using modern WPA2 security: So choose your WEP secured network: Enter the network key: The DS will connect to your WEP secured network ok: How To Dump Nintendo DS Game Cartridges To Roms: This is where you are going to need a DS flashcard, if you search around online you should be able to find them pretty cheap these days. I have a very old M3 DS Real which were popular around 2007: First Download Wood Dumper, then unzip and then copy wooddumper.nds to your DS flashcard like you would do any other Nintendo DS rom. Wood Dumper allows you to dump roms of your Nintendo DS game cartridges over WiFi to your PC. Essentially Wood Dumper loads an FTP server on the Nintendo DS, allowing games to be downloaded over WiFi using a web browser or FTP client. You should then be able to load Wood Dumper from your DS Flashcards menu system: When Wood Dumper loads it will say "Set a target card" what you are been asked here is to remove the DS flashcard from your DS and place the DS cartridge / game in the DS that you wish to dump (create a rom of) Do this then press "A" to confirm the game you wish to dump a rom of is in your DS: Wood Dumper will read the game cartridge you just inserted then try and connect to your WEP secured wireless network: All been well after a few seconds you should see an IP address listed on the top DS screen, this is the IP address the Nintendo DS received from your router: Now on your PC you want to load your favorite web browser, for the purpose of this tutorial i'm using Google Chrome. In the address bar type in ftp:// followed by the IP address displayed on your DS's top screen, for me this was 192.168.1.63 So I typed in ftp://192.168.1.63: You should then see the .nds (rom) and .sav (save game) listed as a file you can download: Simply clicking on the .nds file will download a rom of your game, over WiFi from the Nintendo DS to your computer. The download will either start automatically or you will be asked what to name / where to save the rom: Depending on the size of the game it could take 5 to 15 mins to download, simply leave the download to finish: It should be obvious when the download has finished, the DS will also display a message stating the transfer has finished: Congratulations you have now dumped a rom of your Nintendo DS game cart, which can be loaded from your flash card for convenience or on an emulator: You might be asking yourself why not just download an rom? well this way you can be sure your roms are 100% clean and untouched. In addition their are still rare DS game cartridges out there which have not been dumped, such as Event Pokemon distribution cartridges. Hopefully this tutorial has been some help in showing you how to dump roms of your Nintendo DS games.