The Problem

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In some dark corner of the house, I found an old LeapPad2 that hadn't been used for years. Before sending it to Goodwill, I wanted to wipe any data off of it, but before I could get to that, I found a number of old photos on the it. The OEM software (LeapFrog Connect) would download some of them, but not all of them. Do we have any other options for saving these crude, blurry, sentimental photos and videos?!

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Disclaimers

I am not an expert in USB devices, nor embedded Linux, nor even Linux. This worked for me, and I'm writing it up in case it works for someone else, but if you try it and run into a problem, there is functionally no chance that I will be able to help you. Please proceed at your own caution.

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The steps below involve putting your LeapPad2 into 'developer' mode. If you are unable to complete these steps, this may make the device impossible to use. (This was not the case for me, but I repeat the warning out of an abundance of caution.) Again, proceed at your own caution.

This was all done in early 2019, with a LeapPad2 Explorer and a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ running Raspbian Stretch 9.6. If your software or hardware are different than that, proceed at your own caution.

Background

Some searching turned up a number of resources, none of which were able to help me completely. Rather, I was able to piece together portions of each of them to get the job done. These are some of the resources that kept me moving forward:

I had hoped to be able to just noodle around with exotic block device formats, mount the device like a USB drive and copy the files directly, but .. no dice. Something about UBI formats on embedded Linux devices with USB mode switching. In the end, I was able to put the device into developer mode, which boots it with a USB networking interface and an FTP server, and I was able to use this to download the files I wanted.

Details

Power on your LeapPad, ssh to your pi and plug in your LeapPad to one of it's USB ports. Confirm it's recognized by running the usb-devices command, which should print an entry for the LeapPad. (Look for 'Vendor: LeapFrog' or something similar.)
Clone the OpenLFConnect repo: git clone https://github.com/jrspruitt/OpenLFConnect.git
cd OpenLFConnect
make sure SCSI generic utils are installed: sudo apt install sg3-utils (OpenLFConnect requires access to the sg_raw command.)
OpenLFConnect has not been maintained for ~5 years as I write this. In that time, some of the device management rules have changed for Linux, and the /dev/leapfrog device will not be automatically created for you. So.. create it manually: sudo ln -s /dev/sda /dev/leapfrog (My LeapPad connected as /dev/sda, check the output of usb-devices or lsusb to see where yours in parked.)
Ditto for making sure that the normal user can access the device: sudo chmod 666 /dev/sda (optional, you can also just run the following OpenLFConnect.py commands as root)
Start OpenLFConnect: ./OpenLFConnect.py
OK, now quit: exit (It will have created some default files for you.)
touch files/developer (We'll use this later, in step 15.)
OK, back in: ./OpenLFConnect.py
Load the LeapPad2 configuration: device_profile_load Extras/Profiles/leappad2.cfg and while you're at it, make it the default for next time you start: device_profile_default
Now connect to the device: dftp_connect - after a short pause your prompt should change to remote>. If it doesn't something went wrong. If you see 'File not found' or 'No such file or directory' or such, make sure that sg_raw is installed (see step 4)
At this point, you can poke around the device with ls. I found all of the data that I wanted was stored in /LF/Bulk/Data/Local/All/Photos and ../Videos. OpenLFConnect also includes a command to download files, but I found that it wouldn't work. It would act like it was working, but it would fail or hang or just produce corrupt output.
cd /flags
OK, the point of no return: instruct the device to reboot into developer mode: upload developer
Confirm the file was uploaded: ls - you should see several files, including one called 'developer'
Disconnect: dftp_disconnect
Now unplug the LeapPad, power it down (press the power button) and then turn it back on (press the power button again).
While it's starting, install an old school ftp client: sudo apt install ftp (optional if you already have an ftp client installed. Note the sftp, ftps, etc will not work, and also that you have to ftp to the LeapPad from the device that it's plugged into, not from another device (eg the laptop you're ssh'ing from))
OK, now try usb-devices again. You should see that something has changed: instead of connecting as a usb-storage device, it will have connected as a networking device. (You'll see something about eth in the Driver section.)
List your network interfaces: ifconfig - you should see an eth0 and an eth1 entry (and possibly others). For me, eth0 was the built in interface on the Pi, and eth1 was new and exciting. You should see that it's bound to a 192.168.x.x address.
OK, heres another point of no return: in developer mode, the LeapPad will bind to a static IP of 192.168.0.111. In order to connect to the LeapPad, I had to reconfigure eth1 to bind to the 192.168.0.x subnet. (The terminology may be wrong here.) If you're already using 192.168.0.x via eth0 or wifi (wlan0), then PROCEED WITH CAUTION. I was fortunate and my wifi is on a subnet of 192.168.254.x, so I was able to set eth1 to 192.168.0.1 without issue. If you're already using 192.168.0.x, be careful and make sure you know what you're doing, lest you lose access to your Pi or other devices.
Anyway, assuming you're comfortable with it: sudo ifconfig eth1 192.168.0.1
Now FTP like it's '93: ftp 192.168.0.111 (username: root (yeah!), password: <none, blank, nada> (hell yeah!))
If all goes well, you should be in. Now you can ls and cd around. I was able to cd /LF/Bulk/Data/Local/All/Photos and then ls, then get each of the files via get lf_photo_000000.jpg. (Remember, old school ftp doesn't support wildcards. If you have a lot of files, you may want to find another client. I only had ~40, so it didn't seem worth it.)
Done? Don't forget ./Videos or art or sound files.
Double check your files. You have downloaded them from the LeapPad to the Pi, so you'll have to now get them to your regular computer. I used scp pi@pi:OpenLFConnect/*.jpg . from my laptop but you can do whatever you normally do to copy files from your Pi. Double check that they all look good and that you can view them all.
OK, now done? Great. Still in ftp, you will need to remove the 'developer' mode file we uploaded previously. Start with cd /flags then delete developer. If that doesn't work, you can try rm developer. For some reason, these didn't work

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