Hello y'all. I just made this post to get some opinions from this lovely community. I had a 3DS XL that was working with Gateway but my little brother accidentally updated it a long time ago (last year, I think), and wasn't able to rehack it until now (thank the lord I backed it up). I'll be sending it to Hundshamer this week. Anyway, I'm getting a Pikachu one and it comes with 4.5.0U which is amazing, so my question is... What's good about the hacking now? I remember when I had a hacked 3DS, CIA's and Smealum weren't even a thing, Sky3DS was announced and it had that stupid 10 game limit thing (which isn't an issue anymore as far as I can tell), and PKHeX working with Gateway was a dream. So what's good about hacking now? What are CIA's and their advantages and such? Smealum? I heard Sky3DS works with all versions, what's the best flashcart right now? Is it still Gateway? What's better, Gateway with 4.5.0 or 9.2.0? Many many many questions on my mind. It'd be great if y'all could answer 'em and I'd love to hear some opinions on the flashcarts and such.
It's a long story, during the end of 2014, Smea discovered the first real exploit without gateway called Ninjhax (Which evolved into what it's now a loader for homebrew), but it was also the year where the first CFW for the 3DS (AKA Palantine CFW) was released for the masses, this was huge and it was considered the first right step for the hacking users, by 2015 many things changed, the first months were quite slow, Palantine was still used, and during the end of those months Gateway received an update for the flashcard users until 9.2, which gave access to Palantine CFW for those 3DS users who needed them.
The real change however was with two projects, which are Pasta CFW and rxtools, i remember them like it was yesterday, Pasta team was developing a CFW who was able to do some of the functions the 3DS couldn't, and also bring a way for N3DS users to hack their consoles meanwhile roxas was experimenting with his 3DS in order to obtain an improvement for the already stated Palantine CFW, by the month of april/may Rxtools was released, and it was considered a quite good thing, but it needed to be improved.
By June/July of 2015, Rxtools merged with Pasta in order to develop an even better CFW, this resulted in what we know as today as Rxtools 3.0, which is one of the best CFW's for the 3DS, if not the best we already have there, with Rxtools 3.0 other CFW's followed the legacy like Reinand, an updated version of NTR CFW, and Cakes CFW which did interesting things on their own, at this point, with a 4.5.0 3DS console you will never need a Gateway flashcard anymore, since a CFW can do the job quite well, of course you would have to understand some basic concepts, but they aren't as complicated as they seem to be.
For starters, you know what's emunand right?, is what you use in order to hack a 3DS, the term literally translates to "Emulated Nand" and it's what it says on the tin, an Emulated version of the System Nand, at this point with the current CFW we can actualize the Emunand (Thing that you couldn't exactly do with Palantine CFW) to the highest version and with that run files called CIAs, a Cia is a downloadable format file that packs all of the game's content except for things that only cartridges uses (Like the Headers of the game ID to put an example).
Cias are the digital format used for the Eshop games, since they are quite easy to install and utilize, you may see it as 3DS roms, but instead you have to install them to the 3DS, and they will be read as that, Eshop games, so for now, with a cia you can pack ANYTHING, from Emulators, Virtual Console games, 3DS Games and such, the process is fast or slow depending of your SD (Or your Internet if you're using Socket Punch), in order to install a cia you will need a program called FBI, which is by far, the best cia installer available for the moment (You can also use BigBlueMenu for some compatibility or something).
I don't know too much about Flashcards, but what i do know is that Sky3DS is fairly easy to understand, is quite literally a plug&play flashcard, where you put roms on it, activate the little blue button and that's it, the limit for 10 games has been erased since the end of 2014, and it was finally perfected during the beginnings of 2015, from what i understand now, only two games aren't compatible with Sky3DS which are Animal Crossing: Home Designer (For all regions, i think) and FE: Fates (JP).
And for Gateway, well, Gateway team is the shit!, they managed to put an exploit to the 3DS, that allowed hackers to discover new exploits in a future time, and it all started with them, this flashcard and the efforts of the GW team is going to be remembered as something awesome, and finally for Smealum, well, he is developing a new version of his ExploitHax, which is going to come anytime soon, also Yellow9 announced that he might have an exploit ARM9/ARM11 for 3DS users with >9.2 consoles, which is for now the struggle hackers have today, but at the pace of the scene, the exploit is probably going to be released sometime, that's what i'm predicting.