Hacking Your CFW experience

[kingaz]

Depending on the price you could give it to me.

I could do that :-P.

I'll think it over.

May I ask why you'd want it over CFW? I'm not saying there's no reason (I did buy it after all), just curious.

 

[Returnofganon]

Tubehax to the glorious Ironhax master race.
A couple of firmware updates later I accidentally locked my self out of hombrew and left the scene for a couple of months. When I came back I found out that browserhax was working again (Sweet!) and something called memchunkhax 2. I soon became one of the people in the first group of downgrades when it was completely rng and not much was known about it so the brick risk was high. After a while I downgraded and through some great trouble I got rxtools working. I abandoned rxtools after not being able to update to the latest firmware and finally settled on reinand where I am today.

 

[_D1360_]

> Be me a wild menuhax on 10.3 appears! Downgrade is super effective m'N3DS is young and curious
> Time later emunand rxtools 2.6 installed,but can't upgrade above RX9,5 my N3DS, not compatible yet
>RXtools 3.0, finally N3DS support. oficiallypimped.gif, my cfw on latest Nintendo stabilities attacks, my boot was ready!
>A9LH appears! yo dawg, I heard you like CFW, so we decided to inject your emunand on sysnand with all the extra cfw tweaks.
>Now on aureinand 5.1 it's all good region free and my extr mhz and L2, GBA DSIware all working as desired no'mo' NTR CFW or HANS for extra features oficiallypimped.gif

 

[Giodude]

TL;DR - Got into CFW for the native GBA games, ended up installing A9LH this week just to have updated sysNAND and emuNAND to circumvent what I thought was a permaban on Miiverse without changing my 3DS's serial number.

Spoiler: Long Story

Didn't start homebrew until I found about about tubehax, but only after having checked 3dbrew.com frequently for quite some time. Stopped checking for a while, missed the Cubic Ninja boom. Fast forward until memchunkhax2 was brought about by that hacking talk back in December, and I had to discipline myself not to downgrade until things got better. Figured I'd wait for KernelTimeMachine (RIP x2), but you all know how that went. After reading 100+ pages on @TheStoneBanana's downgrade thread (thank you, by the way for the tubehax tutorial + this one), I jumped in.

My heart was racing like everyone else's. It only worked for me when I was complaining to a friend that it didn't, and things went smoothly from there. Setup emuNAND with rxTools, then moved to ReiNAND, and things were great. I used it for some GBA games and injected VC that didn't depend on HANS or NTR. I had plans to buy Labyrinth no Kanata for the region free as well, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I was content. Up until two weeks ago, that is.

My alternate NNID I had linked to emuNAND at one point got an admin notification on Miiverse. At that time, my actual NNID was linked to emuNAND with a 9.2 sysNAND. Now, I expected it, but because of that, the system realized it wasn't actually linked to my 3DS. Not much of a problem until I got permabanned on my actual NNID. I held off from A9LH because of the hassle and brick possibility for a while - 9.2 was good enough for me. Menuhax worked well enough for my tastes, and it was obvious which NAND was which so I wouldn't mistake updating. But because I got banned on my actual NNID, I wanted to have updated sysNAND and emuNAND. That way I could link both NNIDs at the same time like I had before (in a sense). So I did my reading. Made sure I understood the process. Asked a fellow temper who had done the process a couple of times about stuff. Then I dove in. With @Giodude's support (thanks again, man), everything went superbly. Except for this - A9LH Process Abnormality. No idea what that was about.

Finally having done it, I thought my idea would work. Nothing doing, of course - it was a console ban as well. I didn't want to change my 3DS's serial number (what if I got someone's actual serial, you know?), so instead, I tried this. I ended up doing that anyway for a short time just to communicate with someone, but at the end of the day, I've got A9LH installed. And for what...

i forget what did i do?

EDIT: Ah didnt know it was u

 

[FTRBND]

Tubehax on 9.1, found a random video on youtube about it, had no idea about smea and gbatemp and cfw and all of that, thought it would only help me run Region Free Cartridges so I just ignored it for the rest of the year.
Haven't touched my 3ds for a few months, it stayed on 10.3 even before browserhax. 3 Weeks ago, came by gbatemp, decided to turn on my 3ds, found out everything there is to know about 3ds hacking, downgraded to 9.2, got rxtools, 10.7 emuand. 2 hours later, moved on to ReiNand. 1 Hour after, moved on to AuReiNand. 2 Days after, moved on to A9LH <3

 

[coinblock]

Started off with GW on my 3DS XL way back when it was first released, launched via MSET exploit. Eventually, I migrated over to an N3DS, and to RxTools CFW after experimenting with Reinand and Cakes for a while. I'm still using 10.7 RxTools and Menuhax, don't care enough to spend hours moving over to a9lh just yet. This setup does everything I need it to, and boots ~95% of the time.

 

[Boogieboo6]

I looked into homebrew way before I actually did anything. Back when I first looked into it, Ninjhax was the only exploit. I waited a while and then checked again. I kept updating my console along the way and updated to 9.9 and started looking for hacks. After finding out I could play all the free games I wanted to with a fancy thing called RxTools, I found I needed a lower console version. I managed to get a 7.0 3ds and downgraded to 4.5, set up RxTools and MSET and was the coolest kid in the world. Happy with this setup, I stopped looking around for more hacks and played with my free games. Later on, I looked around to see what progress was made in the hacking scene. I had an N3ds that was over 9.2 when I got it, so I kept it updated. Eventually, I end up getting menuhax on the N3ds. I downgraded it when I could. I got a Menuhax and Reinand setup. I switched to A9LH and Cakes.

 

[hobbledehoy899]

I could do that :-P.

I'll think it over.

May I ask why you'd want it over CFW? I'm not saying there's no reason (I did buy it after all), just curious.

I'd do a comparison video of MSET Gateway vs A9LH AuReiNand.

 

[KazoWAR]

Lets see. At around the time of the gateway 9.2 support release. I made a backup of my 3DS NAND and SD Card, then downgraded to 4.5 and messed around with palantine cfw. got some old games to install and run as CIA, messed with some homebrew. ok neat, but I still want to play Pokemon so i restored my 9.2. Maybe a week or so later I learned that the emunand of a clonecart(can't remember the name)worked without the card(gateway emunand would not boot without the gateway card). So at that point I set up emunand with my 9.2 system. then downgraded my system back to 4.5. and had a sd card for palantine cfw and another with my 9.2+eshop games. So now I had the best of both worlds, plenty of older games I could try plus homebrew and still had access to pokemon. then came rxtools(no piracy version) so I switched to that since it supported the newest FW. then came the day when someone hacked rxtools to remove sig checks. (prior to that there was the whole sysnand pastaCFW but i never used it since iirc it only worked with ninjhax) shortly after that CakesFW was released and I switched to that since it wasn't a modded rxtools that went against the creator's wishes. I used CakesFW up to the point where my 3ds broke.(water damage) If I ever get another 3ds ill set it up with A9LH probably use CakesFW again.

 

[PaiiNSteven]

Started with a blue o3DS XL. Tubehax came in and I was having the best time of my life playing smw rom hacks and stuff. Then themehax; more fun with romhacks. Then, I was able to downgrade to 9.2. I was honestly so scared; it wasnt even funny. So I fiddled with that for a few months, got a second 3DS, then installed a9lh. I tried to install a9lh on my blue 3DS, but it bricked, so I turned to my other 3DS. Currently enjoying a9lh master race.

 

[Psi-hate]

It was November 20th, 2014. Smealum had just release Ninjhax 1.0. I saw some YouTube stuff and quickly asked my sister to buy me Cubic Ninja for christmas. That Christmas, I obtained CN and immediately installed Ninjhax on my 9.2 Purple o3ds. A few months pass. I found the pastebin that brought the first sig patched 9.2 CFW to the 3ds scene. Later on, Gateway releases GW Ultra and the 4.2 downgrade. I downgraded and installed Palentine CFW. During February of 2015, I had just bought Majora's Mask 3D. I entered Gateway Classic Mode assuming I had emunand, and updated while going out to buy MM3D. When I returned, my 3ds was on 9.3+. I legitimately cried. A half year passes. Smealum announces Ninjhax 2.0, Ironhax, etc. I immediately set up my 3ds and prepare. I wait weeks until release. Smealum delivers and I enjoy *hax to the fullest. Menuhax becomes a thing and I use homebrew 24/7. Few months progress and the 3DS Hacking stream airs, and we find out about memchunhax2, ntrcardhax, a9lh, keyscrambler, etc. At this point, I buy the Isabelle N3DS awaiting more *hax. Then, January 3rd, the day after my birthday, memchunkhax was working and I was able to downgrade my N3DS and my O3DS to 9.2 while only about a few dozen had too at that point. I install CakesFW and enjoy emunand and all that jazz. Delible develops his a9lh interpretation and gbatemp sighs, wondering how in the world were regular users going to use it. I join the #cakey irc and helped @dark_samus3 , @Plailect , @MassExplosion213 , @Vappy , etc by being their ballsy beta tester without a hardmod. I successfully downgraded both of my systems, retrieved the OTP, and became one in the first handful of a9lh users. At this point, I began testing payloads and eventually, screeninit was completed and that was when everything became mainstream. Ever since then, I've been a9lh all of my friend's 3dses and became friends with a lot of Devs. This scene is weird, but I like it.

 

[Quantumcat]

I got into buying and selling video game stuff in 2011-2012. Acquired a GBA which I loved and played for a while. Always ignored current gen stuff, never even looked at a DS. Then I found out my favourite game OoT was remade on 3DS so I had to buy one. Got a bundle with a black o3DS. Later bought an aqua blue because it was prettier, system transferred, sold the black one. Got a pink one at a garage sale and found it was on a low firmware and wondered if I could do anything with it since I had heard you could mod Wiis and PS3s that were on low firmwares. Bought a Gateway and joined that other forum, but I hadn't done my research properly and the firmware was too low, so I bought a copy of Virtues Last Reward on eBay (as it had a high Metacritic score) to update it. So I had a Gateway'd 3DS! I didn't end up playing with it much as I had also bought a gold Zelda XL on eBay and it was so much more beautiful. The Gateway forum said to update it to 9.2 and then not update anymore because something good was coming so I obediently did so. I bought all the games I wanted to play so I could play them on the XL so the Gateway felt a bit wasted. In the meantime I was buying 3DS bundles and reselling them separately along with the other video game stuff. One of the bundles contained cubic ninja and I tried selling it but no one wanted it so I shoved it in a cupboard and forgot about it. So then end of 2014 comes with Smealum's homebrew thing, and I have cubic ninja, cool :-) This in when I joined GBATemp as there wasn't much discussion on the other forum. Then later Gateway get support for 9.2, which is awesome, as now I can use Gateway on my XL, and I sell my collection of games off. Everyone is downgrading left right and centre to use the DS profile exploit, but I decide not to as I'm a bit paranoid. I'm happy using the browser exploit, and just keeping my console charged and in sleep mode. Pasta comes, then rxTools, and I play with them a bit on spare consoles but keep Gateway on my main. I don't buy an n3DS console on launch cause I think it's a bit of a gimmick, the prices will come down, and Gateway doesn't work on them. But then later when the MM consoles are announced for preorder I become a sheep and get one :-) I don't open it for a few months because I'm quite happy with my gold XL and the phantom hourglass aluminium case which fits it perfectly. But the Reinand has DS profile support so I decide to set it up and have Gateway and Reinand. Once I'm emotionally ready to part with my Zelda XL I list it on eBay (November 15) and it sells to an American. But she makes up some story about there being something wrong with the screen and eBay believes her, despite me having like ten pictures of the screen in the listing with nothing wrong with it. So she gets a refund and gets to keep it along with the case, the club Nintendo stuff, and even a little toy kangaroo I always add for international buyers. The worst part is I adored that console and cared for it lovingly for like two years. And then this happens. If anyone lives in Brockton MA and wants to go rough her up let me know, happy to provide name and address ... used Gateway for the rest of the year (tried menuhax but didn't succeed in getting the buttons to load what I wanted so said bugger it) and just changed to a9lh.

 

[astrangeone]

Left the scene alone for a while, and then heard about the Cubic Ninja exploit. I just figured that people couldn't crack the hardware and stuff yet, and BOOM, full cfws and everything else.

3 weeks ago:
- Let me check what's going on. Oh? What the **** is emuNAND/sysNAND? *reads a while, does research* Okay.
2 weeks ago:
- picked up an extra blue o3DS, and attempted to figure out what to do with it. Ended up putting RxTools and an emuNAND on it with Powersaves and OoTHax
- picked up a copy of Cubic Ninja
- bought a couple of 16 gigabyte SD cards (had a bunch of extra 3DSes)
1 week ago:
- got my new o3DS XL Link Between Worlds hardware up and running with AL9H
- converted the blue o3DS into an AL9H system.
- system transferred to the Link Between Worlds 3DS; downloaded and installed a ton of cias
- did the AL9H + AuReiNAND thing for two more systems - died and lost a ton of sleep over it (may have to do the black o3DS I still have...waiting on if that server maintenance by Nintendo actually means anything...)

Presently:
- Thinking of buying a new 2DS for my besty and hacking it so she can play.

 

[Supster131]

It all started in December 2015, while I was out on vacation. I was visiting Wololo (because I didn't know about GBATemp at the time), when I saw an article titled "3DS: BrowserHax, IronHax and MenuHax released for latest Firmware 10.3.0". I didn't pay too much attention to it because I wasn't even home and because I rarely even used my 2DS. Around two weeks later, MrMario2011 made a 3DS downgrading tutorial, since I'm subscribed to him the video appeared in my sub box. I almost skipped the video because I just wasn't all that interested, but since I didn't really have anything better to do, I decided to watch it. I started to gain interest and decided on downgrading my 2DS, and of course, it partial downgraded. So I updated it back to 10.3 then once again back down to 9.2, and it worked! I was able to create an emuNAND and boot it with rxTools (as that was the only good option for the o3DS at the time). The concept of an emuNAND sounded weird at the time. The entire 3DS running off the SD card and not with the internal NAND chip? What the hell? Updating the emuNAND even sounded scary, but I went ahead and did it. What'd you know my 3DS was running 9.2 and 10.3 at the same time! I thought that was so cool! About a week later I bought a New 3DS XL just so I could do the same thing on it. Fortunately, my n3DS did not partial downgrade on the first try. I used ReiNAND on my n3DS as rxTools didn't support 9.5+ emuNAND on the n3DS. A few days later, a ReiNAND mod was released for the o3DS (now known as Luma3DS). I decided to switch to it because that's what my n3DS technically used. Fast forward a month later and a guide for obtaining your OTP was released. It was released on my last day of vacation. The guide essentially told you, "DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT A HARDMOD". It sounded very risky, but I decided to start doing it on my 2DS. A few hours later I obtained my OTP, success! Unfortunately, D9 didn't exist at the time for 2.1, so the only way of using it was by updating through a game cart. So I used Omega Ruby to update my 2DS to 7.X. It pretty much soft bricked it. I couldn't open anything, I couldn't open the camera, or any app whatsoever. I couldn't even launch a game cart or update again. Even with this happening to me, I started to do the process on my n3DS as well. I stopped mid-way however, as I just couldn't afford bricking my n3DS as well. So, 2 days later after the original guide came out, Decrypt9 for 2.1 was released, and I was stoked! I decided to continue the process of downgrading my n3DS to 2.1, this time however, I was on #cakey, since I heard that's where all the information for A9LH was at. I must say, they were very helpful. Each time I had a question or a doubt, they would answer all of my questions. A while later, I was on 2.1 and I obtained my OTP! I launched D9 and restored my 9.2 NAND backup. I was still new to compiling 3DS stuff at the time, so I asked someone if they were able to compile A9LH for me and they did. This was the moment of truth.. the time to install A9LH! I launched the installer on my 3DS and..... it got stuck on "exploiting arm9". It was on that screen for a while, so I decided to ask #cakey if something was up. They told me to restart the system. I was scared to do so, but I did it. Take 2, I tried to install A9LH again. This time it actually worked! It installed A9LH and it turned off my system. I placed in a modified ReiNAND payload (as no CFW officially supported A9LH at this time yet) on my SD card and within seconds my emuNAND booted up. A week later, the ReiNAND mod (now known as Luma3DS) added A9LH support. It was (offically) the first CFW to do so. In the same day, there was talk about being able to use sysNAND as your main NAND on the latest firmware. That sounded scary! A day later Luma3DS added FIRM protection, a bit later a guide that that showed you how to switch emuNAND with your sysNAND was released. I was one of the first few to switch to sysNAND. Finally, here I am now. Running either Luma3DS or Prelude as my CFW on my A9LH n3DS. If it weren't for that one tutorial by MrMario2011, I probably wouldn't even be here right now, so huge thanks to him!

 

[HenryLeonheart]

Started with Ironhax when it was released, I was on 10.0.0-27 and kept updating until 10.3. I had Ironhax, Tubehax, Menuhax and Browserhax all working until the fateful day of the 32C3 presentation. I watched it and got super hyped about memchunkhax and so in January when it was released, I was one of the first people to downgrade my N3DS to 9.2 without a hardmod. (Still remember it was super unstable and had to reboot a lot of times). Afterwards people started discussing A9LH on its thread in the Homebrew Section and I was following it ever since. When Plailect released the first version of the guide, I jumped in again with the same N3DS and did the setup successfully. I've tried RxTools, ReiNand, CakesFW and now AuReiNand.

 

[TrashyClassy]

No-Hax > TubeHax 9.9 > Browserhax 10.3 > Downgraded in the first day when sysupdater was released and it successfully downgraded. > rxTools > AuReiNand A9LH

 

[A_Random_Guy]

Bought a 3DS to play pokeman X. Few months later, I was bored and decided to find a way to hack the 3DS. Found GBAtemp and people are currently hyping about the release of Ninjhax 1.0 . I was on 9.2 and waited a few days before realizing that i will have no chance of buying Cubic Ninja. I updated to 9.3, 9.4 and then on 9.5, i discovered PCbox by @KazoWAR . Using the spider exploit to cheat and things. At this time, i was hungry for roms. Decided to search and found out how to downgrade from 9.2 to 4.5 to install Palantine CFW. I was sad due to no kexploit on 9.5. A few months later, Smea annouced freehax. Was excited and that time, i already download Ironfall which is a bonux for me. Tubehax and all. I kept using homebrew more than playing my games. Stayed on 9.9 due to Nintendo released a 10.0 update without fixing anything. Then, memchunkhax2 was released and all other goodies too. Downgraded and use Menuhax and RxTools for 2 months. Than, i found out A9LH. Downgraded to 2.1 safely and got my OTP but i fucked up by using a AS catridge to update which softlocks the console. Updated to 10.5 and cried for a month. GPUchunkhax was released and i was able to downgrade to 9.2 and finish my A9LH installation.

tl:dr Bought 3DS for Pokeman, Interested in hax and now staying with SmeaNAND

 

[samiam144]

Bought my black O3DS back in 2013, mainly for Pokemon X/Y and the then unreleased Smash Bros.
Then in January 2015, Gateway came out with the <9.2 support and of course I jumped on that. I even downgraded to 4.2 when the downgrader was released so I can use MSET.
I've kept up with the scene, witnessing the rise of the first CFW that supported EmuNAND besides Gateway (rxTools), then eventually PastaCFW and the modified sig-patched rxTools by AHP_person in May or June. It was then that I started my tutorial (been almost a year, damn!). Then rxTools was officially re-released to allow unsigned CIA launching (free gaems!!) and I adjusted the tutorial accordingly. The scene continued to explode, with new CFWs like Cakes and ReiNand, Ninjhax 2, NTR CIA support, downgraders, etc. Many months later, A9LH comes out and I set that up with AuReiNand, which I thought was pretty cool because it reminds me of the PSP days :') . But to this day I still use my Gateway because I have a bunch of games shared between the red card and the 3DS SD card, and of course to be able to use the almighty cheat engine

 

[a9lh-1user]

in the beginning there was a Sky3DS so i had only ONE card against 27
i used Cubic Ninja to get into homebrew and had fun.
then there was A9LH and i tried it on my OLD 3DS with Cakes it was amazing!
Then the NEW 3DS with Cakes ... again AMAZING

After a conversation with "Crystal The Glaceon" (and a push) it was possible to start more than on CFW to try them all. (Ctrbootmanager9)
Now i'am on 5 (at boot) and one more from inside (NTR).

Very happy that so many people spend theyr spare time to do something FREE for the USERS

 

[Resset]

My first experience with CFW was in 2015 when I owned o3DS XL, unfortunately with FWabove 9.2 without ability to downgrade. So I've decided to sell it and bought n3DS XL with FW 9.0.0 preinstalled. Finding it was a total pain. After that I started doing some standard stuff:
Backup sysNAND -> Install Menuhax -> rxTools -> emuNAND and some FW spoofing to get eShop access. I was happy that I could play my fav games, launch homebrew from home menu, custom themes etc. And the n3ds 10.3 emunand appeared. I immediately abandoned rxTools for ReiNand that only supported newest emunand fw. Unfortunately the ReiNand lacked some features so I went full CakesFW. I was happy until A9LH became a thing. After some time of reading, checking GBATemp to make sure everything will work. Succesfully downgraded my n3DS XL to 2.1.0 to get OTP but probably it was ffw because I couldn't run any custom code from browser. I ran recovery mode, updated... and bricked it. I cried loud, tried to do a hardmod but without success. My 3DS died for good ;^;...

Until yesterday. After 3 months I bought a new device (n3DS XL on 9.9.0). I downgraded it to 9.2.0 with some issues (Couldn't run browserhax because system asked me to update - used TubeHax DNS and mobile hotspot, SysUpdater crashed in the middle of downgrade etc.). I did everything one more time but with the newer utilities. Got OTP and succesfully set up A9LH. After losing one console I am now part of A9LH Master Race = AuReiNand 5.1.2 (Luma3DS) and 10.7 sysNAND.

tl;dr version:
Only one n3DS harmed during this process
rxtools with menuhax on emunand 9.5 -> ReiNand with menuhax on emuNand 9.5+ -> CakesFW with emuNAND -> trying to A9LH -> created expensive paperweight
New device -> downgrade from 9.9.0 to 9.2.0 -> set up A9LH -> Successfully Installed AuReiNand 5.1.2 (Luma3DS) and 10.7 sysNAND