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Hacking Is it possible to upgrade M3i without the USB cable?

Sportsmaniac1322

Sportsmaniac1322

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I bought an M3i Zero basically the day it came out, and since then I've lost the upgrade cable it came with. I've read somewhere before that you can use the DS to power the card as it upgrades, but so far this hasn't worked for me. Is there something I'm doing wrong?
 
how_do_i_do_that said:
You would have to take the shell apart to do it and solder or temporaryly connect wires to the spot where it would normally charge to a DS/i/XL/LL usb cable, like the ones you can buy cheap from a site like DX.
Click to expand...
Is there anywhere I can find a detailed description on how to do this?
 
You will need to peel back the top right corner of the sticker to expose the screw then seperate the shell. You will also need a generic usb DS/i cable, which you can get one at DX. The one in the picture is the DSi usb charging cable.

IMG_150682c.jpg


Split the usb cable to a length you can use or are comfortable with. Expose a short length of the copper wire.

IMG_150686b.jpg


To shortcut it for you, I already mapped the what goes where. The left side of the usb cable is on the left, which is the white wire, and the right side of the usb is the red wire.

IMG_150696b.jpg


That means the bottom 2 wires or the right side of the connector is white and the left or top 2 are for the red wire.

IMG_150691c.jpg


You can insert the wires into the socket or touch them to the back side of the of the connector. The easiest way is to put one of the wires into socket and use the other to touch the wire to the back, this gives you a hand free from holding and moving the other wire.



So until M3 actually understands that they need to also sell the usb adapter seperately as well for those that lose it, something like this will always be neccessary.
 
Im guessing a standard USB cable doesn't provide the required voltage? What exactly does a "generic usb DS/i cable" provide?
 
Also curious as to why a DS/i cable is needed, and not just any USB cable? I've got a billion usb B cords from other electronics.

Edit: I cut up a usb to B cable and used the black (to replace white on your diagram) and red wires. The white & green wires are data + and - so I assumed that the M3i just needed power from usb. It seemed to work since the red LED turned on but just stayed on. I'm assuming it's because I'm trying to upgrade to the 4.5 update but it requires a .nds file to be run through a NDS/i/lite first before I can flash.

Edit2: I was able to successfully flash to 4.2.0 using that cord. Follow how_do_i_do_that's diagram but use the black wire instead of white.
 
I made the same cord and tried running the same updated but I didn't get anywhere just a solid red light. What am I doing wrong? Can someone make a tutorial for this with the make shift BlueLemming cord and the how_do_i_do_that guide and make a solid pdf maybe one even showing how to make ur own plug for the data transfer, which I don't think would be tough just desolder that lil box and reattach a micro or mini USB hook up prob a micro because you gotta keep the size down. I don't know why they didnt do that to begin with.

the desolder would look something like this


Sorry for bumping this really old thread. I just thought this could use some fine tuning. There are a bunch of people out there stuck with the m3 zero and no usb cable (because its so small and easy to lose) are shit outta luck, until I found this single thread. Now I know there is hope. I have a DSI XL BTW.
 

Imagereupload.

I can confirm this works for flashing. I got one of the models with the wire on the same side as the sd card, but I succesfully flashed a "broken" M3i Zero using this trick. What actually ended up being the fix for me was using piece of tape behind the board to improve the contact connectivity though, I think it was actually flashed in the past with an older core. I also had to flash it with Panasonic SD Formatter. Normal formatting methods did not work.

I took a random usb cable and cut it, to make it easier to flash it without interruption I put some solder on the tip of the wires to make it stiff and insertable. Make sure it's not too thick or too thin and it gets pretty easy.
 

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