Hacking Need help preventing a 3DS brick with R4i Gold

[Zamzummin]

I posted a thread last week to double check that running my R4i Gold Deluxe with fw3.0 is in fact safe from bricking my 3DS. Back then I assumed I was running 3.0 since the last R4 firmware file I could find on my hard drive was 3.0. I've been playing Zelda: ALBW without turning off the 3DS because of prior save corruption issues. Now I finally beat the game tonight so after turning off my 3DS I took out my SD card to copy over my save file to my PC. Just for the hell of it, I double checked the MD5 hash of the Launcher.dat on my SD card against the one in the folder Firm(3DS_Card)_3.0 and to my surprise they were different.

• Launcher.dat on my SD card: C077FB143982B5868C32E87B29761816
• Launcher.dat on my PC in the folder Firm(3DS_Card)_3.0: 2525DBB11503F0858451406C69F2CD92

Now I'm not sure if I actually had 3.0 running on my 3DS the whole time. I need to compare MD5 hashes against the different firmware versions but I can no longer download older firmware from the r4ids.cn homepage because they took down all of the links (even if I modify the URL).

Three questions:

1. Can anyone confirm the MD5 of the 3.0 firmware and 3.1 firmware if you still have it on your computer?

1. If I was accidentally running 3.1 this whole time, am I at risk of bricking my 3DS the next time I turn it on (from power off not from sleep mode) even if I don't run the exploit? What I mean is, can anyone confirm if the brick code runs in the background and then executes even when not in "gateway mode"?

1. Can I swap out the Launcher.dat from my SD card to a confirmed 3.0 version and not be at risk of future bricks even if I was running 3.1 in the past? I know this seems like a stupid question but I'm not sure whether the code runs in real-time or if it runs at some random point which then causes a brick in the future.

I'm too scared to turn on my 3DS until I can confirm that I'm running the correct version. Fuck gateway and their scare tactics. Having a 3DS flash card shouldn't be this stressful.

 

[R4iFanboi]

3.1

c077fb143982b5868c32e87b29761816


Living dangerously!

 

[lonesome_killer]

Having a 3DS flash card shouldn't be this stressful.

Well you're running unauthorized code on a machine that was copied without permission from another source who made it without permission. Don't put all the fault on GW.

Sorry don't have anything related to add to your questions.

 

[redkeyboard]

3.0: 2525DBB11503F0858451406C69F2CD92

3.1: C077FB143982B5868C32E87B29761816

 

[Zamzummin]

3.1

c077fb143982b5868c32e87b29761816


Living dangerously!

Dang, so I was running 3.1 this whole time and simply avoided a brick by running Zelda for 2 weeks straight. Kind of scared to turn on my 3DS and find it with a blue screen.

Can anyone confirm if I'm at risk of bricking if I swap out my Launcher.dat for 3.0 and continue playing my 3DS as normal, assuming it doesn't brick as soon as I turn it on?

Edit: I turned on the 3DS and it seems fine. I'm actually going switch to 3.3b (i.e. 2.0) since now that I beat Zelda (great game btw) I don't need 3.0 anymore.

 

[ryuga93]

Dang, so I was running 3.1 this whole time and simply avoided a brick by running Zelda for 2 weeks straight. Kind of scared to turn on my 3DS and find it with a blue screen.

Can anyone confirm if I'm at risk of bricking if I swap out my Launcher.dat for 3.0 and continue playing my 3DS as normal, assuming it doesn't brick as soon as I turn it on?

Edit: I turned on the 3DS and it seems fine. I'm actually going switch to 3.3b (i.e. 2.0) since now that I beat Zelda (great game btw) I don't need 3.0 anymore.

Make sure to backup your sysNAND,it is needed incase the 3ds bricked

 

[ryuga93]

Double posting,was using tablet

 

[Zamzummin]

Make sure to backup your sysNAND,it is needed incase the 3ds bricked

Is an unbrick even possible yet? As far as I knew there was no way to unbrick your 3DS except for Gateway's dubious RMA offer in which they suggest sending them your sysNAND in order to make things a lot easier to restore your system. And that's only offered for legit Gateway bricks. Other than that I was reading that swapping the mainboard works as a cheaper alternative to getting a new 3DS all together. To be honest I haven't been keeping up on it every day so there might be some other method that I haven't seen.

Edit: Nvm, I'm way behind. It looks like a method was found using hardware mods and is being tested.

 

[Timmyytim]

Phew, used 3.1 with zelda a good amount of time and had luck \o/,

is 3.3b really safe? Dunno what they fixed and they mean with avoid 3.0-3.3 all the previous version but not 3.3b?

Oh, ok 3.3b is really old, then i better get 3.0

 

[bostonBC]

If you want to be completely safe remove the SD card, format it and any hidden partitions on your PC. Completely erase your 3DS and then put the older launcher on it.

 

[Zamzummin]

Phew, used 3.1 with zelda a good amount of time and had luck \o/,

is 3.3b really safe? Dunno what they fixed and they mean with avoid 3.0-3.3 all the previous version but not 3.3b?

Oh, ok 3.3b is really old, then i better get 3.0

Yeah, 3.3b is identical to R4i's 2.0 firmware. That means it doesn't play newer games, but is somewhat more stable than 3.0 which does. Both are safe from bricking though.

I switched to 3.3b briefly until I realized I needed 3.0 to play the new Attack on Titan game (Shingeki no Kyoujin - Jinrui Saigo no Tsubasa) released in Japan. Pretty fun if you are a fan of the series.

 

[aXXo]

Is an unbrick even possible yet? As far as I knew there was no way to unbrick your 3DS except for Gateway's dubious RMA offer in which they suggest sending them your sysNAND in order to make things a lot easier to restore your system. And that's only offered for legit Gateway bricks. Other than that I was reading that swapping the mainboard works as a cheaper alternative to getting a new 3DS all together. To be honest I haven't been keeping up on it every day so there might be some other method that I haven't seen.

Edit: Nvm, I'm way behind. It looks like a method was found using hardware mods and is being tested.

You missed quite a lot. The solution is still in the "testing" phase, so no one actually managed to unbrick their console yet (the people who wrote the code don't have any bricked consoles to test it on, and the people with the bricks don't have the unbricking hardware). Right now, the people with bricks are waiting for their hardware to arrive before they can attempt anything. And even if they manage to unbrick, it's not worth all the effort if you can just avoid that by using 3.0 or under. But, if you want to be prepared for an immonent brick, back up your nand, and buy a soldering iron and a raspberry pi.

 

[gamesquest1]

i think both methods have been tested and confirmed working but its still pretty unrefined but seems to work, just needs to have a few final tweaks to the code and be bundled up into a nice little tutorial with shopping lists for each method, also a few people are looking into making a solderless adapter for the XL's standard 3DS's will still need soldering

 

[Zamzummin]

If I get bricked, I'd probably try to find someone offering an "unbricking service" who has the hardware and knowledge to do it properly. That is, if I can find someone in Canada willing to offer it.