Hacking Another 3DS XL NAND mod weirdness... Any clue?

[mvmiranda]

Hello guys,

I have a weird 3DS with me today.

First off, please, allow me to say that I have done several of this before, that's why I've found this weird.

I have a customer that bought two 3DS so I could swap their guts. It's a Gold Zelda bunble on 7.1 with Pokemon Y (he downloaded on that promotion) and Zelda ALBW, of course, and a normal red 3DS on 4.1. After the whole process I'll use n1ghty's emuNAND tool to pass the 7.1 NAND to the emuNAND on the new Gold with 4.1 NAND. It's simple despite the whole NAND, emuNAND I spit out here. Anyway...

I swapped the motherboards successfully (now gold is on 4.1 and the red on 7.1) and soldered wires to the micro USB correctly. Tested continuity on the wires to catch shorts before soldering the wires to the motherboard, all fine. I connect the cable to the 3DS micro USB and PC, and a new drive letter appear, still all fine, BUT (I hate when a but appears), everytime I run Win32 Disk Imager, the letter disappear. So I shutdown (removing the battery or holding power for around 16 seconds) and when I turn the 3DS on without the cable the, the console fails to boot properly, either giving me a blue screen, black error screen or turns on properly but hungs (the upper screen doesn't show the option I selected bellow), and if I select enything, it freezes.
All comes back to normal when I unsolder the wires from the motherboard.

The cable is around 12cm long with something around 8cm for the internal 3DS wires from the motherboard to the micro USB female. So, it's something around 20-22cm long in total. I'm using a cheap chinese micro SD/SD to USB reader (the same one I used for every 3DS and X360 I've modded lately), and it's working. I even tested with MY 3DS XL to read, write and it's ok.

I checked continuity on the wires I soldered to the motherboard, no shorts, everything looks normal.

I'm gonna solder a cable directly to the motherboard to try to dump the NAND without the micro USB male/female. Let's see what happens.

Meanwhile, any clues on what could be happening?

PS: I have not posted any pictures because there's nothing wrong with it, honestly, it's all weird. No solder "drops", no tiny wires cut, I even clean everything with isopropyl alcohol after I solder, but if you guys want so see a picture, I can post.

Thanks!

 

[BvanBart]

All comes back to normal when I unsolder the wires from the motherboard.

That's your answer right there. When the 3DS detects a different checksum it prevents to boot. My guess is that the wires are somehow giving an electric discharge.

 

[mvmiranda]

That's your answer right there. When the 3DS detects a different checksum it prevents to boot. My guess is that the wires are somehow giving an electric discharge.

Makes sense... And I've thought about it. But WHAT is giving or provoking the "electric discharge" as there's no short?!

Maybe the wires are giving some resistence to the pins or something... I'm no expert and I could be talking nonsense, but this is weird.

 

[BvanBart]

Resistance will be the issue here. You can block that putting a resistor between the wires. This is actually normal. Because every I/O port has a listen frequency. This way signals are not colliding.

 

[mvmiranda]

Resistance will be the issue here. You can block that putting a resistor between the wires. This is actually normal. Because every I/O port has a listen frequency. This way signals are not colliding.

Gotcha!
Any clues on resistor values?

Also, I have a hunch that the "culprit" could be CLK, but the only way to test it 100% is to solder one by one and check which one causes the "glitch", right?
I mean, I have 3 chances as GND should not cause issues, or am I wrong?

 

[mvmiranda]

I soldered all 4 wires and went to the same error, so I started removing one by one to see which one (or ones) is (are) causing the issue.
The first I removed was CLK and it started booting fine, so I went to load GW blue card to install the exploit and run GW NAND backup utility and BAM, black error message. Turned the console off and on again, and got a blue screen.

So I removed CMD wire as well and all went fine.

So it's definitely around CLK and/or CMD wires.

Now what? How to solve this? Resistor? Which values should I attempt?

 

[mvmiranda]

Ok! Some progress and updates...

I've found out that leaving everything connected BUT the CMD line makes the console works correctly when I'm using the micro SD.
I've taken 3 different dumps using the GW NAND backupt utility. Just for the sake of safety

Continuing the tests, I've soldered a little cable I have for quick unbricks using the rasp pi. It's just a wire version of the micro SD to SD adaptor with something like 8cm wires I solder directly to the board when I'll just unbrick a 3DS. It turns out that this way the console works and I'm able to do good dumps using Win32 Disk Imager. I've taken 3 dumps and they all match.

This leads me to think that "something" with either my soldering in the micro USB pins or the micro USB itself is not right. Although there's no short circuits in them.

Since I have other micro USB laying around I'll try using it and see what happens.

 

[mvmiranda]

Soldering another micro USB didn't help, so it's not the micro USB.
It could be interference. maybe the wire and micro USB are working like "antenas" and causing interference.

I've shortened the wires as much as I could to leave the micro USB in it's place without success.

I'll try a different connector with a case cut and smaller wire length.

 

[gamesquest1]

try rerouting the wires around the edge of the board

 

[mvmiranda]

try rerouting the wires around the edge of the board

I will do this, but I have already tried putting the micro USB the other side of the wrist wrap without success. The wires passed around the SD reader and next to the card slot.

Thx, btw!

 

[Reecey]

Hello guys,

I have a weird 3DS with me today.

First off, please, allow me to say that I have done several of this before, that's why I've found this weird.

I have a customer that bought two 3DS so I could swap their guts. It's a Gold Zelda bunble on 7.1 with Pokemon Y (he downloaded on that promotion) and Zelda ALBW, of course, and a normal red 3DS on 4.1. After the whole process I'll use n1ghty's emuNAND tool to pass the 7.1 NAND to the emuNAND on the new Gold with 4.1 NAND. It's simple despite the whole NAND, emuNAND I spit out here. Anyway...

I swapped the motherboards successfully (now gold is on 4.1 and the red on 7.1) and soldered wires to the micro USB correctly. Tested continuity on the wires to catch shorts before soldering the wires to the motherboard, all fine. I connect the cable to the 3DS micro USB and PC, and a new drive letter appear, still all fine, BUT (I hate when a but appears), everytime I run Win32 Disk Imager, the letter disappear. So I shutdown (removing the battery or holding power for around 16 seconds) and when I turn the 3DS on without the cable the, the console fails to boot properly, either giving me a blue screen, black error screen or turns on properly but hungs (the upper screen doesn't show the option I selected bellow), and if I select enything, it freezes.
All comes back to normal when I unsolder the wires from the motherboard.

The cable is around 12cm long with something around 8cm for the internal 3DS wires from the motherboard to the micro USB female. So, it's something around 20-22cm long in total. I'm using a cheap chinese micro SD/SD to USB reader (the same one I used for every 3DS and X360 I've modded lately), and it's working. I even tested with MY 3DS XL to read, write and it's ok.

I checked continuity on the wires I soldered to the motherboard, no shorts, everything looks normal.

I'm gonna solder a cable directly to the motherboard to try to dump the NAND without the micro USB male/female. Let's see what happens.

Meanwhile, any clues on what could be happening?

PS: I have not posted any pictures because there's nothing wrong with it, honestly, it's all weird. No solder "drops", no tiny wires cut, I even clean everything with isopropyl alcohol after I solder, but if you guys want so see a picture, I can post.

Thanks!

Carn't help you with that one m8 but it was a good read!

 

[mvmiranda]

Carn't help you with that one m8 but it was a good read!

All for the science, bro! LOL

That's why I keep updating the thread even if there aren't much responses.

I know it might be good for someone else sometime.

Keep up the good work!

 

[gamesquest1]

well it does sound strange, although i had one last time that was being funny and just shortening the wires and moving them seemed to do the trick

 

[BvanBart]

Goodmorning (was asleep haha).

Stupid question but are you using a grounded socket for your PC?

 

[mvmiranda]

Goodmorning (was asleep haha).

Stupid question but are you using a grounded socket for your PC?

Yes I am!

The whole building has ground wires and I recently reformed the entire apartment and asked the electrician guy to pass ground cables for me, so yes, I'm using ground wires on all power connectors.

Weirdest part is that my 3DS (a blue one, although I don't think color would influence in this issue, but that's just a wild guess AHHAHAh) has exactly the same install. Same wire type (copper stranded), same length, same micro USB connector (5 pins using only 4) and I'm also using the same micro USB male to SD cable I created for me.
My blue one works like a charm while the other one don't

Isn't it weird?

I mean, I'm used to other consoles modding and I've seen X360 weirdness, but there, we're talking about a mod chip, with circuits, ICs, softwares and stuff, here we only have wires, basically.

 

[BvanBart]

Is it the same build (as in... same building period?) could be a defect on the 3DS site ofc...

 

[mvmiranda]

Is it the same build (as in... same building period?) could be a defect on the 3DS site ofc...

Well, maybe we're talking about different things. I might have misunderstood you...
When I mentioned building I meant my house. My whole apartment has 3 holes wall connectors (one for ground). That's what I meant by grounded socket for my PC.
In this case, everything that has a third pin power plug is grounded too.

So, it's definitely the 3DS. I guess I have a very "sensitive" 3DS. LOL

 

[BvanBart]

I meant the 3DS as well . Where I work a build means a batch. So one batch/build is made in Januari and another in Februari .

But glad we agree that this will be 3DS related. Still strange though.

 

[mvmiranda]

I meant the 3DS as well . Where I work a build means a batch. So one batch/build is made in Januari and another in Februari .

But glad we agree that this will be 3DS related. Still strange though.

Gotcha!
it could be a build/batch issue too. I mean, this is a "assembled in Brazil" unit or something, meaning "most likely crap!" I'm kidding... or not... anyway!

I have an assembled in USA (I guess) and I have a Luigi's Mansion cart. When I updated my USA 3DS it went to 4.5.0.10U while this "sensitive" one went to 4.5.0.8U.

I mean, all of this is too much weird