Hardware [HELP] N3DSXL Brick

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 8, 2016

First I want to apologize in advance if this is the wrong section to post this kind of thread, Iv'e been a member since 2010, but never really used the forums. Also new to 3DS homebrew.

Okay so long story short, I stupidly fucked with some NAND system update .cia files and it (not surprisingly), led to my Nintendo 3DS XL to be bricked. When I turn on my system the blue led illuminates, but both of the screens remain to stay stuck on black screens. System will not boot into recovery. I have a 9.2.0-28 NAND backup, but with black screens I obviously can't restore it without some kind of hardware fix.

Since my system is still in warranty, I'm thinking about sending it into Nintendo to see if they'll fix it. If they do fix it will it come with the latest firmware? If they won't fix it due to the fact that they detected homebrew I was thinking about what I can do to restore the NAND via hardware. I heard you can restore the NAND with a Raspberry PI or something but the tutorials aren't really clear, or are for different 3Dses, and they seem a bit outdated.

On a different note I was recently thinking about buying the New Nintendo 3DS Pokemon 20th Anniversary Bundle. Iv'e heard that all of the USA New Nintendo 3DS (non-XL) come preinstalled with FW 9.5. With the recent announcement of Gateway adding compatibility for FW 10.3 would this also cover FW 9.5? Can 9.5 FW be updated or downgraded to 9.2/10.3 using sysUpdater or FBI?

tl;dr
Questions:
Does Nintendo send your console back with the latest firmware update?
Just out of curiosity what happens if you restore a NAND from a different 3DS? (I assume it would brick it, but idk)
Is there a way to restore a NAND to a New 3DS XL with hardware?
Can I update or downgrade on FW 9.5 using sysUpdater or FBI?

Xenon Hacks · Feb 8, 2016

Does Nintendo send your console back with the latest firmware update?
They will refuse to repair it once they see your Nand and on the off chance they do repiar it they will upgrade it to the latest firmware.

Just out of curiosity what happens if you restore a NAND from a different 3DS? (I assume it would brick it, but idk)
You can't Nand's are console unique so yeah you would brick.

Is there a way to restore a NAND to a New 3DS XL with hardware?

Can I update or downgrade on FW 9.5 using sysUpdater or FBI?[/QUOTE]
Yes by using Safesysupdater https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip-safesysupdater.409392/

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Also if you're afraid to do the Nand mod yourself you can send it off to @hundshamer

N64 · Feb 8, 2016

new 3ds consoles come with 9.8+. i'm pretty sure the pokemon anniversary edition will come with 10.4+
source: my ACHHD console came with 9.8

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 8, 2016

secousa said:
new 3ds consoles come with 9.8+. i'm pretty sure the pokemon anniversary edition will come with 10.4+
source: my ACHHD console came with 9.8

And if the Pokemon 3DSes come with 10.4+ the only way to downgrade is hardware mod, correct?

Xenon Hacks said:
Does Nintendo send your console back with the latest firmware update?
They will refuse to repair it once they see your Nand and on the off chance they do repiar it they will upgrade it to the latest firmware.

Just out of curiosity what happens if you restore a NAND from a different 3DS? (I assume it would brick it, but idk)
You can't Nand's are console unique so yeah you would brick.

Is there a way to restore a NAND to a New 3DS XL with hardware?

Can I update or downgrade on FW 9.5 using sysUpdater or FBI?

Would only Safesysupdater work or could I use sysUpdater or FBI?

Just wondering if Nintendo would know, since the only cias that were deleted were exclusive to the FW 9.3+ (or at least I thought).

N64 · Feb 8, 2016

TheLegendaryJame said:
And if the Pokemon 3DSes come with 10.4+ the only way to downgrade is hardware mod, correct?

yes

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 8, 2016

As stupid as this is gonna sound this is the reason my system was bricked. I realized how dumb it was to do this and even when I was doing it I felt like it wasn't the right thing to do. So before you laugh this is how I bricked my console.
I started out on a New 3DS XL FW 10.3. I decided to downgrade using sysupdater after reading about how most of the time the process is successful. So I downgraded to 9.2 successfully, first try too. Meanwhile, while browsing the GBAtemp forums I was reading that when you downgrade there are a few .cias that do not get deleted that were added in 9.3+ and can cause potential problems. So I went on that "3ds iso" site and compared 9.2 .cia files and 10.3 cia files. I only deleted the .cia files that were exclusive to the 10.3 update. I deleted 6 of them using FBI. The .cia files were:
0004003000009E02.cia - amiibo Settings
0004013000001A02.cia - DSP system-module
0004013000001B02.cia - GPIO system-module
0004800542383841.cia - DS Internet (DSi-mode application)
00048005484E4441.cia - Download Play (DS-mode application)
0004800F484E4841.cia - Nintendo DS Cart Whitelist
Again I deleted those files because I thought they were exclusive to the 9.3+ updates and I was told they could cause potential problems. I also had no idea what the .cias were related to before I deleted them. If I had to guess I got screwed over mainly by deleting the "DSP system-module" and the "GPIO system-module" (cause they sound important), but either way I still don't really know why my system bricked.

Blue · Feb 8, 2016

The Pokèmon New 3DS will definitely not be 10.4 as they are made a few months before announcement in which case 10.4 wasn't out.

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 8, 2016

Aqib Ali said:
The Pokèmon New 3DS will definitely not be 10.4 as they are made a few months before announcement in which case 10.4 wasn't out.

Well, that's rather comforting, thanks for the info.

Aroth · Feb 8, 2016

@TheLegendaryJame

I suggest next time you read through my thread (or at least check the last few pages, someone questions what titles are safe to delete/downgrade almost every page and I always politely provide the answer so people won't have to trudge through the entire thing) before going off and deleting titles. Nothing to do for it now, but hopefully you learned your lesson about deleting titles from nand?

I replied to your pm, but I will relay the basic points here just in case someone else does the same or is thinking about it.

The ONLY title on the N3DS that is exclusive to 9.3+ is amiibo Settings. All other titles are present on 9.2 systems, albeit in a lower revision.

GPIO system-module and DSP system-module are REQUIRED for the system to boot properly GPIO, as its name implies, handles some of the many input/output functions. DSP is your sound module. The other three you messed with are DS mode titles and while deleting them would break DS cart playback, that is about all they will do.

GPIO and DSP need to be downgraded separately from the initial 9.2 downgrade because they are not included in the 9.2 update packs (and thus the 9.2 downgrade packs) since at that time they had not been updated since 7.1. Every N3DS system had the latest version so to save bandwidth, Nintendo removed them from the update response until they were updated again in 9.6 (I think, may have been 9.5 or 9.7).

In your specific case, the fact that you have a 9.2 NAND dump is EXTREMELY good news. Rather than sending your system into Nintendo, I would suggest you contact someone who offers unbricking/downgrade services and pay them to install a hard mod and flash the nand backup you have back to the chip. This will most likely cost far less than a new system. Wanna say the going rate to just install the backup is less than $50. If you want to keep the hard mod it might be a bit more, but still less than $100. Don't quote me on the pricing though as it is not a service I have used or that I offer.

If you send your system into Nintendo, best case scenario is they fix it and update it to 10.5. In that case you would either have to spend $200 on a new system, or pay to have someone downgrade your 10.4 firm to 10.2 and (requires a hard mod) and then downgrade back to 9.2 again. Either way you will have to pay to get a working system back on 9.2 with CFW, unless you are confident in your ability to install a hard mod and flash the nand yourself. It requires a VERY steady hand and decent soldering experience/skill.

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 8, 2016

Aroth said:
@TheLegendaryJame

I suggest next time you read through my thread (or at least check the last few pages, someone questions what titles are safe to delete/downgrade almost every page and I always politely provide the answer so people won't have to trudge through the entire thing) before going off and deleting titles. Nothing to do for it now, but hopefully you learned your lesson about deleting titles from nand?

I replied to your pm, but I will relay the basic points here just in case someone else does the same or is thinking about it.

The ONLY title on the N3DS that is exclusive to 9.3+ is amiibo Settings. All other titles are present on 9.2 systems, albeit in a lower revision.

GPIO system-module and DSP system-module are REQUIRED for the system to boot properly GPIO, as its name implies, handles some of the many input/output functions. DSP is your sound module. The other three you messed with are DS mode titles and while deleting them would break DS cart playback, that is about all they will do.

GPIO and DSP need to be downgraded separately from the initial 9.2 downgrade because they are not included in the 9.2 update packs (and thus the 9.2 downgrade packs) since at that time they had not been updated since 7.1. Every N3DS system had the latest version so to save bandwidth, Nintendo removed them from the update response until they were updated again in 9.6 (I think, may have been 9.5 or 9.7).

In your specific case, the fact that you have a 9.2 NAND dump is EXTREMELY good news. Rather than sending your system into Nintendo, I would suggest you contact someone who offers unbricking/downgrade services and pay them to install a hard mod and flash the nand backup you have back to the chip. This will most likely cost far less than a new system. Wanna say the going rate to just install the backup is less than $50. If you want to keep the hard mod it might be a bit more, but still less than $100. Don't quote me on the pricing though as it is not a service I have used or that I offer.

If you send your system into Nintendo, best case scenario is they fix it and update it to 10.5. In that case you would either have to spend $200 on a new system, or pay to have someone downgrade your 10.4 firm to 10.2 and (requires a hard mod) and then downgrade back to 9.2 again. Either way you will have to pay to get a working system back on 9.2 with CFW, unless you are confident in your ability to install a hard mod and flash the nand yourself. It requires a VERY steady hand and decent soldering experience/skill.

I did go back and read your full thread and it all makes sense to me now. I feel like this could have easily been avoided if I looked into it a bit more. Now after I felt like I just got scolded like a dog that just peed on the floor, now I just feel like an idiot. I was mostly just being dumb and careless, and I guess that's when things are apt to go wrong. Live and learn, I guess. Worse things have happened to me than possibly perma-bricking a 3DS. And I'm not really too experienced with soldering, so that's probably not great. Maybe I should just wait for a 10.5 exploit, browserhax already works with it. I couldn't imagine it would take somebody too long to figure how to get a working emunand with 10.5. The DSi and Wii are compatible with backups and homebrew on their latest version so it only makes sense that eventually someone will figure out how to make an emunand with 10.5.

Aroth · Feb 8, 2016

TheLegendaryJame said:
I did go back and read your full thread and it all makes sense to me now. I feel like this could have easily been avoided if I looked into it a bit more. Now after I felt like I just got scolded like a dog that just peed on the floor, now I just feel like an idiot. I was mostly just being dumb and careless, and I guess that's when things are apt to go wrong. Live and learn, I guess. Worse things have happened to me than possibly perma-bricking a 3DS. And I'm not really too experienced with soldering, so that's probably not great. Maybe I should just wait for a 10.5 exploit, browserhax already works with it. I couldn't imagine it would take somebody too long to figure how to get a working emunand with 10.5. The DSi and Wii are compatible with backups and homebrew on their latest version so it only makes sense that eventually someone will figure out how to make an emunand with 10.5.

Do not try and wait for a 10.5 kernel exploit because it will not come. There is a WIDE gap to cross between running basic homebrew and setting up an emunand. Basically the 3DS has 3 groups of addressable memory. A, B, and C. The entire system, including all apps and the ARM11 processor and its kernel can access A. The exploits we have now also allow us to access and write to A in a way that the ARM11 processor will run in. To run the kind of code that allowed us to downgrade we need to be able to access and write to B, which is memory that only the ARM11 kernel and ARM9 processor can write to. With write access to this area we can make the ARM11 processor execute code with kernel level privileges and do things like install signed titles. To set up an emunand and install unsigned code we need access to C, which can only be read from and written to by the ARM9 processor.

To put things in perspective time wise, we have had access to A since October of 2014 and have never really lost it (suspect Nintendo can never really patch the exploits we use to gain it). We gained access to B and then C around the same time, but lost access to B (which we used to get access to C) in December when 9.3 released. We did got gain access to B again until a year later. Even though we have access to B again, we still have not gained access to C without downgrading because they fixed that a few months after fixing what gave us access to B.

So even if an exploit exists that gives us access to B again, we can reasonably expect it to take a year or more to find. I personally would not try and wait for that since it is highly possible the exploit they find won't work on newer firmwares by that time.

That said afaik arm9loaderhax works to get emunand even on 10.5 (its the kind of thing that is impossible to patch), but it requires access to things you cannot get without a hard mod as a safety net since the process is very brick prone. Plus you can't do it without a way to downgrade to 1.0 to access the OTP register, so....

tl:dr

Don't bother waiting, it's not something that is "right around the corner". Looking at a year+ of waiting and work. If you are content with homebew, send your system to nintendo for repair and hope they fix it. If you want CFW, pay someone to hard mod it and restore the nand backup you made.

funnystory · Feb 8, 2016

TheLegendaryJame said:
As stupid as this is gonna sound this is the reason my system was bricked. I realized how dumb it was to do this and even when I was doing it I felt like it wasn't the right thing to do. So before you laugh this is how I bricked my console.
I started out on a New 3DS XL FW 10.3. I decided to downgrade using sysupdater after reading about how most of the time the process is successful. So I downgraded to 9.2 successfully, first try too. Meanwhile, while browsing the GBAtemp forums I was reading that when you downgrade there are a few .cias that do not get deleted that were added in 9.3+ and can cause potential problems. So I went on that "3ds iso" site and compared 9.2 .cia files and 10.3 cia files. I only deleted the .cia files that were exclusive to the 10.3 update. I deleted 6 of them using FBI. The .cia files were:
0004003000009E02.cia - amiibo Settings
0004013000001A02.cia - DSP system-module
0004013000001B02.cia - GPIO system-module
0004800542383841.cia - DS Internet (DSi-mode application)
00048005484E4441.cia - Download Play (DS-mode application)
0004800F484E4841.cia - Nintendo DS Cart Whitelist
Again I deleted those files because I thought they were exclusive to the 9.3+ updates and I was told they could cause potential problems. I also had no idea what the .cias were related to before I deleted them. If I had to guess I got screwed over mainly by deleting the "DSP system-module" and the "GPIO system-module" (cause they sound important), but either way I still don't really know why my system bricked.

Damn,it sounds like my post screwed you over. You were supposed to get those files from the o3ds pack and downgrade them,not delete them lol.

Aroth · Feb 8, 2016

funnystory said:
Damn,it sounds like my post screwed you over. You were supposed to get those files from the o3ds pack and downgrade them,not delete them lol.

Hey I'm equally at fault for not going back and consolidating the thread's info in the OP until after something like this happened.

funnystory · Feb 8, 2016

Aroth said:
Hey I'm equally at fault for not going back and consolidating the thread's info in the OP until after something like this happened.

If you have a nand backup Im pretty sure you can hardmod to unbrick.

Aroth · Feb 8, 2016

funnystory said:
If you have a nand backup Im pretty sure you can hardmod to unbrick.

He does, which is why I suggested he go that route rather than send it in to Nintendo. If/when they fix it they will update the system to 10.5, which would require a hardmod to downgrade from anyways.

piratesephiroth · Feb 8, 2016

TheLegendaryJame said:
As stupid as this is gonna sound this is the reason my system was bricked. I realized how dumb it was to do this and even when I was doing it I felt like it wasn't the right thing to do. So before you laugh this is how I bricked my console.
I started out on a New 3DS XL FW 10.3. I decided to downgrade using sysupdater after reading about how most of the time the process is successful. So I downgraded to 9.2 successfully, first try too. Meanwhile, while browsing the GBAtemp forums I was reading that when you downgrade there are a few .cias that do not get deleted that were added in 9.3+ and can cause potential problems. So I went on that "3ds iso" site and compared 9.2 .cia files and 10.3 cia files. I only deleted the .cia files that were exclusive to the 10.3 update. I deleted 6 of them using FBI. The .cia files were:
0004003000009E02.cia - amiibo Settings
0004013000001A02.cia - DSP system-module
0004013000001B02.cia - GPIO system-module
0004800542383841.cia - DS Internet (DSi-mode application)
00048005484E4441.cia - Download Play (DS-mode application)
0004800F484E4841.cia - Nintendo DS Cart Whitelist
Again I deleted those files because I thought they were exclusive to the 9.3+ updates and I was told they could cause potential problems. I also had no idea what the .cias were related to before I deleted them. If I had to guess I got screwed over mainly by deleting the "DSP system-module" and the "GPIO system-module" (cause they sound important), but either way I still don't really know why my system bricked.

This was one of the stupidest ideas I've seen here, haha
Especially because you could easily have tested this on an emunand first.

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 9, 2016

funnystory said:
Damn,it sounds like my post screwed you over. You were supposed to get those files from the o3ds pack and downgrade them,not delete them lol.

Aroth said:
Hey I'm equally at fault for not going back and consolidating the thread's info in the OP until after something like this happened.

@funnystory It wasn't your post that screwed me over, and just to be clear it's not anybody's fault but mine. I made the assumption that the 9.2 update pack included ALL the system titles that are required. Obviously learned that the hard way. The good news for me is that since I have a NAND backup, there is someone I found on GBAtemp with a good rep that has offered me a VERY reasonable price to get this fixed. And just to be clear are games linked to your system or your NNID? So for example if I went out and bought a New 3DS (cause I was kinda wanting that Pokemon one) would I have to do the whole system transfer bullshit or could I just link my NNID and download the games from the eShop?

piratesephiroth said:
This was one of the stupidest ideas I've seen here, haha
Especially because you could easily have tested this on an emunand first.

Yeah, thanks for pointing out the obvious. Yeah I realized that, but at the time I didn't really have emunand setup/working correctly because I kept formatting it to see if this NNID error would go away. Even when I had both my systemnand and emunand linked it gave me the same error messages on both.

N64 · Feb 9, 2016

TheLegendaryJame said:
@funnystoryAnd just to be clear are games linked to your system or your NNID? So for example if I went out and bought a New 3DS (cause I was kinda wanting that Pokemon one) would I have to do the whole system transfer bullshit or could I just link my NNID and download the games from the eShop?

They are linked to your system AND your NNID. you would need to perform a system transfer in order to download your games on the new 3ds. it won't let you sign in on the new one without the transfer. you _could_ call up nintendo and tell them your 3ds was lost in order to unlink your ID from the old 3ds, but you'd lose all save progress

Aroth · Feb 9, 2016

TheLegendaryJame said:
And just to be clear are games linked to your system or your NNID? So for example if I went out and bought a New 3DS (cause I was kinda wanting that Pokemon one) would I have to do the whole system transfer bullshit or could I just link my NNID and download the games from the eShop?

secousa said:
They are linked to your system AND your NNID. you would need to perform a system transfer in order to download your games on the new 3ds. it won't let you sign in on the new one without the transfer. you _could_ call up nintendo and tell them your 3ds was lost in order to unlink your ID from the old 3ds, but you'd lose all save progress

Game purchases (including preinstalled games from systems you linked your NNID to) are linked to the NNID only now. You can call Nintendo and have them manually transfer your NNID to the new system (just tell them you lost the old system) and you can redownload any game you own that is linked to that NNID.

Saves on the other hand are linked to the system and will be lost unless you perform a system transfer OR use a homebrew like SaveDataFiler to extract them and then inject them into the SD card data new system.

Installed game data is also linked to the system so you cannot simply copy it over to the sd card in the new system and have it show up, you have to redownload it if you do not wish to do a system transfer.

Keep in mind that if you do have Nintendo perform an offline system transfer from your current system to a new one, the NNID will be removed from the current system and you will be unable to download data on the eshop and I am unsure if you will still be able to access games that were previously installed before the offline transfer.

TheLegendaryJame · Feb 9, 2016

secousa said:
They are linked to your system AND your NNID. you would need to perform a system transfer in order to download your games on the new 3ds. it won't let you sign in on the new one without the transfer. you _could_ call up nintendo and tell them your 3ds was lost in order to unlink your ID from the old 3ds, but you'd lose all save progress

Well I don't have any save progress on my DSi titles I bought since when you transfer the games from DSi to 3DS it automatically deletes your saves (Thanks Nintendo!), so that won't really be an issue. Just out of curiosity if you called Nintendo and claimed that your old system was lost and they unlinked NNID with your old system, couldn't you have games on both the old system and new system?

Hardware [HELP] N3DSXL Brick

If you have had a bricked 3DS in the past (due to homebrew) and sent it to Nintendo did they fix it?

Yes

No

They sent me a brand new one!

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Banned!

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I wish I could read

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