Hardware N3DS NAND backup possible, I hope.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Avalynn
  • Start date Start date
  • Views Views 272,047
  • Replies Replies 1,228
  • Likes Likes 27
Alright I managed to get 10 MB/s then it dropped to 3 lol but it's reading with my other reader after cleaning up the wires and joints. :)

hmm sustained 5,5 MB/s using only one data line now ^^

I'll update my main post with my findings in a bit, but so far i've gotten 5 fulls dumps supposedly.

Here is a picture of what I was trying to explain about D0-D3
EMMC_removed_WiiU.jpg


Source:
http://wiiubrew.org/w/images/2/27/EMMC_removed_WiiU.jpg
http://wiiubrew.org/wiki/File:EMMC_removed_WiiU.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bug_Checker_
First post updated with my findings and such. Thank you everyone who's contributed and if anyone else can safely attempt this and let me know how it goes that would be much appreciated. :yaysp:
 
Thank you! Was looking for the pinouts to backup my 9.0 majoras mask n3ds. But I'm not going to be a guinie pig :P Have you tried to write your dump back yet?
 
When you write back your nand you should mess around the home screen, add folders / move around icons. Once you write it back it should go back to normal.

I am waiting on a friend to give me the green light to send my N3ds to get my hard mod done.
 
When you write back your nand you should mess around the home screen, add folders / move around icons. Once you write it back it should go back to normal.

I am waiting on a friend to give me the green light to send my N3ds to get my hard mod done.
yeah i would test mine but im waiting for an excuse :P...........i also dont *want* to be first to test it out, i would be surprised if they still haven't done anything to prevent downgrades:unsure:
 
yeah i would test mine but im waiting for an excuse :P...........i also dont *want* to be first to test it out, i would be surprised if they still haven't done anything to prevent downgrades:unsure:


I don't blame you, but imop it's kinda hard if not impossible for nintendo to prevent you from reading the nand of the board once you find the pins.
 
Why do you have GND connection on the other side of the motherboard? Could you not use the cartridge metal pin connection as GND like with previous models?

Either way, it's great to see n3DS NAND mods finally being possible. The best nintendo could do to prevent this is to simply not provide the "test pads". But I have a felling they need them since they probably use them to load the NAND at the factory and for the repair process. They might try and phase it out in the next generation successor to the 3DS but I don't think they'll go out of their way to do that. They'll focus more on preventing exploits from showing up. If they can do that, NAND mods won't really have any purpose. :P
 
I am surprised by the lack of epoxy under/around the NAND chip.
Btw, The motherboard with the different pad placement(square) I was talking about earlier was with the normal N3DS and not the N3DS XL.

*snip*
Source:
http://garage99.net/blog/new_3ds/
http://garage99.net/blog/wp-content/gallery/new_3ds/IMG_3571.jpg
so im guessing this would be the pinout for the n3ds normal size.....(minus the clk point ....and ground, but ground is easy to find :P)
IMG_3571.jpg


im planning to make a bunch of pinouts for all models and make all the points colour coordinated for easier referencing
 
I think were looking for this:
16343223898_c78575b533_o.png
yeah i was looking at that point but on the XL you can see a trace going from the point in that position going to the nand, but from what i can see on the standard there is no trace from that point to the nand.....so idk....might work, but i didnt want to just throw a point on there because it looked similar :P

im sure someone will check it out though at some point B-)
 
Why do you have GND connection on the other side of the motherboard? Could you not use the cartridge metal pin connection as GND like with previous models?

Either way, it's great to see n3DS NAND mods finally being possible. The best nintendo could do to prevent this is to simply not provide the "test pads". But I have a felling they need them since they probably use them to load the NAND at the factory and for the repair process. They might try and phase it out in the next generation successor to the 3DS but I don't think they'll go out of their way to do that. They'll focus more on preventing exploits from showing up. If they can do that, NAND mods won't really have any purpose. :P

So the reason I chose that GND was out of sheer convince and I don't like applying any more heat then I have to on the board, i.e. on metal shielding because it can soak a lot of it. The pin is outta of the way from any major chip so I didn't need to to route it and it's another wire I didn't need on the reserve side.

On the note of test pads, that is not likely going to happen. These board get made and special jig are made to test all the logic, and components, I'm sure boundary scans are done as well. Also the boards are still hand inspected and tested I assume because they have scribbled markings on them in marker. :ha:

I am just glad to have the older information to work with so I don't have to remove any of the chips myself, but having a logic analyzer can be quite useful even when you don't exactly know what you are looking.

I have one from the MH4U and interestingly it was only dumping files that were 1.2GB so something is wrong there, same board but different memory module, using a Samsung one. I hope the red one the gf has a different board as well, it'd be nice to get info for all of them out there. I am considering updating my N3DS and then restoring the NAND but first I am going to try to inspect the files and make sure they are not all FFs or something silly...
 
so im guessing this would be the pinout for the n3ds normal size.....(minus the clk point ....and ground, but ground is easy to find :P)

im planning to make a bunch of pinouts for all models and make all the points colour coordinated for easier referencing

Yeah sorry about the numbers in the first post picture, they are for my reference on the wires because once you flip the board over you can't see the pins haha, so i strip my wires accordingly with a marker. Also at some point once I finish testing this do you think we should update the hardware wiki on this stuff?

Also there is an CLK signal on the other side of the board as well if you can't get to that tiny one near the chip.
 
So the reason I chose that GND was out of sheer convince and I don't like applying any more heat then I have to on the board, i.e. on metal shielding because it can soak a lot of it. The pin is outta of the way from any major chip so I didn't need to to route it and it's another wire I didn't need on the reserve side.

On the note of test pads, that is not likely going to happen. These board get made and special jig are made to test all the logic, and components, I'm sure boundary scans are done as well. Also the boards are still hand inspected and tested I assume because they have scribbled markings on them in marker. :ha:

I am just glad to have the older information to work with so I don't have to remove any of the chips myself, but having a logic analyzer can be quite useful even when you don't exactly know what you are looking.

I have one from the MH4U and interestingly it was only dumping files that were 1.2GB so something is wrong there, same board but different memory module, using a Samsung one. I hope the red one the gf has a different board as well, it'd be nice to get info for all of them out there. I am considering updating my N3DS and then restoring the NAND but first I am going to try to inspect the files and make sure they are not all FFs or something silly...
you should be able to see the NCSD at 0x100 to confirm it was dumped correctly
 
you should be able to see the NCSD at 0x100 to confirm it was dumped correctly

Well it definately looks alright, large blank spaces but also parts with data segments so I'm happy and yes i see NCSD.

This is from the black one with a dump size of 1.84 GB (1,979,711,488 bytes)
N3DS-Hex-Ava.PNG

This is from the MH4U with the Samsung memory, oddly dump size 1.21 GB (1,300,234,240 bytes)
N3DS-Hex-Dlk.PNG
 
Yeah sorry about the numbers in the first post picture, they are for my reference on the wires because once you flip the board over you can't see the pins haha, so i strip my wires accordingly with a marker. Also at some point once I finish testing this do you think we should update the hardware wiki on this stuff?

Also there is an CLK signal on the other side of the board as well if you can't get to that tiny one near the chip.
oh, that post was in regards to the standard n3ds, not the XL/LL, and yeah i think the pinouts on 3DBrew need updating, they still dont have the 2DS pinout on there, and it would be good to get them all universally the same in terms of colour coding, i always use black = GND, red=CLK, Green=Dat0, Yellow=CMD with the wires i use for the SD reader, so i would like it if it was along those lines :p
Well it definately looks alright, large blank spaces but also parts with data segments so I'm happy and yes i see NCSD.

This is from the black one with a dump size of 1.84 GB (1,979,711,488 bytes)
View attachment 15721

This is from the MH4U with the Samsung memory, oddly dump size 1.21 GB (1,300,234,240 bytes)
View attachment 15722
hmmm yeah i heard the nand size is 1.2GB....strange, check the free blocks on each of them, im assuming they probably dont use the extra space but just got the 2GB chips cheaper
 
oh, that post was in regards to the standard n3ds, not the XL/LL, and yeah i think the pinouts on 3DBrew need updating, they still dont have the 2DS pinout on there, and it would be good to get them all universally the same in terms of colour coding, i always use black = GND, red=CLK, Green=Dat0, Yellow=CMD with the wires i use for the SD reader, so i would like it if it was along those lines :p

hmmm yeah i heard the nand size is 1.2GB....strange, check the free blocks on each of them, im assuming they probably dont use the extra space but just got the 2GB chips cheaper


Was there a 2DS pinout for NAND dumping? I might/must have missed it.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum