Miraculous ways you've UNbricked a gaming system or other device

GerbilSoft

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I've seen a few threads here about ways you've managed to brick systems, either accidentally or on purpose. How about the other way around: ways you've managed to UNbrick systems.

A couple of years ago, some guy on an IRC channel I frequent mentioned that his Wii's IOSes were broken. Among other things, when entering WAD Manager, the Wii Remote would shut off, and when running DOP-Mii, it would fail to mount the SD card. HBC was showing IOS38 v16.27 (v4123), which is unusual; it should have been IOS58. After several hours of debugging, we loaded Multi-Mod Manager... and it said it was using IOS51 v4864. RED FLAG; that's a STUB IOS. I have no idea why HBC decided to load a stub IOS for all homebrew while it was just fine using a working IOS for itself. (This explains why SD mounting failed; that's done through IOS.)

This system DID happen to have BootMii installed as Boot2. Trying to reinstall HBC using bootmini.elf didn't work. After some searching, I found a PC-side tool called Ohneschwanzenegger, which lets you install WAD files (including reinstalling IOSes) directly into a NAND dump. We ended up dumping the NAND using BootMii/boot2, reinstalling all of the IOSes using Ohneschwanzenegger, and then restoring the NAND. (For IOS51 and other stubbed IOSes, I installed the latest unstubbed version so we could get the system into a usable state by installing IOS58 and then reinstalling HBC.)

...and it worked! Homebrew no longer had problems accessing Wii Remotes or SD cards, and once HBC was reinstalled, it was using IOS58 v24.32 (v6176).

(Sidenote: When checking the NAND dump using NandBinCheck, it reported a good number of IOSes in the standard range (<100) were fakesigned, including IOS58. IOS38 was not fakesigned, which is probably why HBC used it instead. )

What other "magical" ways have you managed to unbrick a system, either via software hax or hardware mods?
 
Last edited by GerbilSoft, , Reason: +sidenote

astrangeone

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My mum's ancient television had a remote that was starting to die. You had to press the buttons absurdly hard to get a reaction, and it finally bit the dust. After cleaning it with rubbing alcohol, I noticed that some solder traces weren't there anymore. I took off all the components and baked it in an oven at 175 degrees. I also reattached the infrared led with normal solder. Lo and behold, it started working like normal again!

Also, I did the same to an old Acekard I was using in my DS Lite. Possibly the weirdest thing I've done to it...
 

mikey420

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Wouldn't call that magical. That's why that tool was originally created. For those that had a bricked system without a valid NAND dump.... They could take there dump and decrypt it. If beyond fucked you could take that dumps per console data and inject it into a working dump from another Wii. Apparently it's also evolved to allow the installation of wads into the NAND dump (which would virtually eliminate the need for a donor dump)
 
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Jayro

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This might seem a bit absurd and Ironic, but I once bricked my OFW/CFW 3.55 PS3 by messing with system files for PS2 Classics to work. I had to resort to using my PSP as a PS3 unbricker, to race the booting process of the PS3 and reinstall 3.55 OFW. My PSP literally saved my ass. The irony was using one modified Sony machine to unbrick another modified Sony machine.

I also torrented a Vista disc back in 2008, but the torrent got stuck at 99%... but when I patched the disc with some patcher and patch I had, suddenly that 1% vaporware got the full ISO working. It was a shot in the dark, but it worked. No problem with the OS, except for the fact it was VISTA. :P
 
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Daggot

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I once baked a RLOD PS3 because I had heard of it's effectiveness. It worked again for a while too and when it finally died months later I had everything I needed from it so I didn't try it a 2nd time.
 

Jayro

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I had an ancient cd-r scratched to hell that had some mp3s I could not find anywhere else, after years of trying to buff out the gash I was finally able to pull the songs
I now use Nero SecureDisc to burn songs to disc, as it makes redundant copies in the extra disc space, so scratches won't matter as long as they aren't on the data layer.
 
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Wanderman_Trigge

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I dont post on here much at all.
I got a psp from a crackden that someone tryed to hardmod and bricked it, ui only worked every 5th time for 10min and would freeze as the joystick would do a HARD left all the time. After takeing it completly apart and flashing ofw it was stable, but the stick still went left. Flashed some god-CFW 5 times,it finaly stoped and now is the best free system i have besides the rrod 360 i resarected like a necromanser
 

Cyan

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not really a console brick:
one day My wii shutdown while using a homebrew (PSX emulator).
I thought it overheated and died, I thought I lost my boot2 console. no red light on the power button, I couldn't boot it anymore.
the power adapter was plugged to the wall and to the wii, like usual.

I could "miraculously" fix it by unplugging the power adapter for few minutes from both sides.
It seems it was a known issue, other users already had that problem. I don't know why it had to be unplug to "reset" the power adapter.

It worked fine until then.
 

hundshamer

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I bought a Wii for $10 that didn't work. He showed it to me and it was only giving him a black screen. Not too sure as to how I fixed it, but I plugged it in to troubleshoot it and it turned on.
 
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CheatFreak47

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http://gbatemp.net/entry/i-will-now-ramble-about-3ds-hacking-for-a-bit.11079/
This is a relevant blog post on some 3DS hacking stuff, but inside is a story of how I unbricked my sister's purple 3DS, ~5 months after it "bricked" randomly on her while playing a DS game.

TLDR?
She started a DS game, it died, couldn't get it to work anymore that week, 2 months later she gets a New 3DS XL, 3 months after that, I decide "Eh what could possibly go wrong?"
and then blow into it's ports and smack the thing around a bit.

It worked:
nqdec.png


Details in the link above, tho.
 
Last edited by CheatFreak47,

Jayro

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I bought a Wii for $10 that didn't work. He showed it to me and it was only giving him a black screen. Not too sure as to how I fixed it, but I plugged it in to troubleshoot it and it turned on.
Was probably on HD cables in 480p or something.
 

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