Hacking Are my old Gateway 3DS cards (red/blue) still useful for playing .3DS and .NDS ROMs?

[retrospect]

The Franken-firmware is 11.6 (maybe higher now, it's been a bit) but it has 6 titles downgraded to 11.2 so GW works.

Thanks for the detailed response. Can you give me any more pointers to finding out about making a franken-firmware? I'd like to get this working so that I can play any .3DS just by putting it on a MicroSD card. I did find 3DS Multi-EmuNAND Creator which ought to be useful for this.

...I'd like to save a load of time avoiding bad CIAs

It turns out the SD card where I'd copied my .3DS files from had gone bad and the files were duds. Urgh. Although that doesn't explain why I haven't been able to make working VC CIAs.

 

[mikefor20]

Thanks for the detailed response. Can you give me any more pointers to finding out about making a franken-firmware? I'd like to get this working so that I can play any .3DS just by putting it on a MicroSD card. I did find 3DS Multi-EmuNAND Creator which ought to be useful for this.



It turns out the SD card where I'd copied my .3DS files from had gone bad and the files were duds. Urgh. Although that doesn't explain why I haven't been able to make working VC CIAs.

Google the name of the flashcart with the words firmware pack 3ds. Its on Maxconsole. Multi EmuNAND is your prerogative. I say it's useless unless you need a sandbox for iffy hacks, or a sandbox for dummies. Like kids, moron friends. Otherwise your GW EmuNAND is already eating space on your SD. The SysNAND is MUCH BETTER to use for Luma. Safe, faster, reliable. Plus the EmuNAND puts more wear and tear on your SD. I think SysNAND Luma and EmuNAND GW is perfect. Luma supports the GW NAND as well. 4 EmuNANDs IIRC..

The AIO pack may be useful. There is a newer one on that iso site last I knew.

 

[retrospect]

Unfortunately the EUR (and US) links on Maxconsole are all dead.
Update: I found an 11.2/11.7 pack which I can simply remove the most recent CIA files from.

Coming back to booting into Gateway Mode from Luma3Ds. I've got a new MicroSD and I've put these files on it:

luma\payloads\gateway.bin
luma\payloads\v2gw.bin
luma\payloads\down_BootCTR9.firm
launcher.dat
boot.firm
boot.3dsx
bootconfig.ini

The Gateway EmuNAND starts up OK, but not in Gateway Mode. That is, there's no dragon boot screen and the select menu and the cart don't work.

I'm not clear on how this set-up is supposed to get Gateway Mode to boot EmuNAND rather than SysNAND. It says in the guide that booting GW Mode on SysNAND will wipe BS9. I certainly don't want GW Mode to ever boot SysNAND and wipe my BS9.

For now my SysNAND is on 11.4. I can restore it to 9.0 and then presumably I can make it a franken firmware 11.2/11.6 using the tool mentioned above so that BS9 isn't at risk. No games require anything above 11.6 so I think that should be pretty good. I'll have to prioritise this step I think.

Eventually I'll probably set Luma to boot SysNAND or Gateway Mode EmuNAND and run both as franken firmware 11.2/11.6, For now though there's other things to sort out - like protecting BS9 from GW.

 

[noctis90210]

just use lumaCFW

 

[retrospect]

When I use the built-in GM9 script to restore EmuNAND, it says "writing to emunand (lvl1) is locked", and asks if I want to proceed and unlock it. That's fine, but will GM9 re-lock again writing to EmuNAND again when I'm done or will I have to do that myself somehow afterwards? Can I check the write status of the NANDs somehow too?

Also, is it normal when booting a Gateway EmuNAND via Luma without GW Mode for all the CIAs to be missing? All the user files are on the SD card under two different IDs. Luma runs the Gateway EmuNAND with the same ID as my Luma EmuNAND. I think my old Gateway EmuNAND had a different ID, which is still on the SD card, but it seems to be getting ignored. I assume that Luma must be doing this correctly and this issue comes from this being a Gateway EmuNAND, but I don't know. It's tricky to make sense of.

 

[mikefor20]

I think you are missing the point. The point is to get on to Luma but still use the Red card just for archival purposes and such.

I will update this post with links and everything, bear with me. Are you using your SysNAND right now? If your GW is your usual method that needs to change.

YOUR plan of action and best case scenario with all the information I an presented with is:

1. BACK UP YOUR SAVES. You should use Checkpoint IIRC to backup your CIA games and you'll have to NABUALLY BACKUP ALL YOUR RED CART SAVES AND DECRYPT THEM. https://gbatemp.net/threads/importing-gateway-saves-to-cia-games.425743/ Keep your .SAV files
   
2. Run through the 3DS guide BUT skip the step where you delete the EmuNAND from SD (DO COPY YOUR EmuNAND to SysNAND but skip deleting EmuNAND from the SD) COMPLETE THE GUIDE. At this point you should have 2 copies of your GwNAND. One on the SD(GwNAND) and one on the 3DS internal NAND (SysNAND) If that is so then you can now play all the CIA files installed under GW in Luma SysNAND instead. This is now your main driver. You will primarily use CIA files from here on out. Your GwNAND installed CIAs will work and so will their respective saves. YOU NO LONGER NEED THE GwNAND for CIA GAMES.
   
3. UNLINK NANDS - At this point the SysNAND And GwNAND will be linked. Unlink the GW nand provided you already copied all to the SysNAND. Ill find a tutorial. You must do this otherwise everything you do in EmuNAND affects SysNAND and vice versa. They share the Nintendo 3DS folder and this is where a lot of the GW related risks spur from. UNLINK THE NANDS https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-unlink-nands-keeping-original-sysnand.390981/ BACK UP SAVES FIRST OR YOU MAY LOOSE SOME
   
4. Install the CIA set you found while in GwNAND to install FrankenFirm, DO NOT DICK WITH THE PACK. INSTALL IT ALL. YOU MUST USE A SPECIAL PROGRAM TO INSTALL. The sorce you found it at should have a tut. To be fair,I would SKIP THIS and just not put the 30 or so games that are incompatible with 11.2+ on Luma.
   
5. Set up GW with CTR9 . https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-using-luma3ds-gateway-on-b9s.431691/
   
6. Install any GOOD GAMES from your Red Card on to the SysNAND
   
7. Restore all your CIA saves with Checkpoint. Leave the shitty games on the Red cart.
8. Boot in to GwNAND and DELETE ALL THE CIA GAMES YOU HAVE INSTALLED. They are now redundant as they are on the SysNAND and just make a bigger footprint.

when you are done you'll have

• Luma running on SysNAND with latest frim and online safe (unless its banned already) CIA Files are safer to go online with than 3ds CARTS because of the header crap. I know Ninty changed the eshop recently. I don't know if their ban detection/practices has changed or not. Beware.
• Gw set to boot using a button at boot. IF GW EVER ASKS YOU FOR A BUTTON COMBINATION THEN IT CANT FIND THE EMUNAND AND YOU ARE BOOT IN TO SYSNAND in GW MODE AND CAN REALLY MESS THINGS UP. POWER OFF!!

• ALL YOU SAVES WILL BE BACKED UP AND COMPATIBLE TO ANY METHOD YOU WANT TO RUN THEM IN (GW OR LUMA)

Anytime you need to boot in to GwNAND to do maintenance, delete things, install the FrankenFirm etc you can just boot in to it using luma. Safer and more stable.

IF you cant wait for me to respond, look through my old posts. I have typed this tutorial MANY times.

 

[mikefor20]

Unfortunately the EUR (and US) links on Maxconsole are all dead.
Update: I found an 11.2/11.7 pack which I can simply remove the most recent CIA files from.

Coming back to booting into Gateway Mode from Luma3Ds. I've got a new MicroSD and I've put these files on it:

luma\payloads\gateway.bin
luma\payloads\v2gw.bin
luma\payloads\down_BootCTR9.firm
launcher.dat
boot.firm
boot.3dsx
bootconfig.ini

The Gateway EmuNAND starts up OK, but not in Gateway Mode. That is, there's no dragon boot screen and the select menu and the cart don't work.

I'm not clear on how this set-up is supposed to get Gateway Mode to boot EmuNAND rather than SysNAND. It says in the guide that booting GW Mode on SysNAND will wipe BS9. I certainly don't want GW Mode to ever boot SysNAND and wipe my BS9.

For now my SysNAND is on 11.4. I can restore it to 9.0 and then presumably I can make it a franken firmware 11.2/11.6 using the tool mentioned above so that BS9 isn't at risk. No games require anything above 11.6 so I think that should be pretty good. I'll have to prioritise this step I think.

Eventually I'll probably set Luma to boot SysNAND or Gateway Mode EmuNAND and run both as franken firmware 11.2/11.6, For now though there's other things to sort out - like protecting BS9 from GW.

GW mode needs to be run through a loader on B9S... I linked a GW tutorial in my last post. It will boot in to a multi boot loader (CTR9BOOT IIRC) and have Luma set to auto boot and GW to L or R.. You'll see the dragon. If it asks you for a button combo then somethings wrong. power off

You will run frankenfirm on EmuNAND ONLY. SysNAND will be current. Follow instructions or you'll be screwed.

YOU DO NOT NEED FRANKENFIRM BECAUSE YOU'LL RUN NEW GAMES IN SysNAND. But you can have it in EMUNAND ONLY/

just use lumaCFW

Please don't go in to GW threads and pretend you are helping by suggesting a full switch to luma. We know. We want both. Good day.

When I use the built-in GM9 script to restore EmuNAND, it says "writing to emunand (lvl1) is locked", and asks if I want to proceed and unlock it. That's fine, but will GM9 re-lock again writing to EmuNAND again when I'm done or will I have to do that myself somehow afterwards? Can I check the write status of the NANDs somehow too?

Also, is it normal when booting a Gateway EmuNAND via Luma without GW Mode for all the CIAs to be missing? All the user files are on the SD card under two different IDs. Luma runs the Gateway EmuNAND with the same ID as my Luma EmuNAND. I think my old Gateway EmuNAND had a different ID, which is still on the SD card, but it seems to be getting ignored. I assume that Luma must be doing this correctly and this issue comes from this being a Gateway EmuNAND, but I don't know. It's tricky to make sense of.

GM9 doesn't unlock or lock nands, that's just the program making sure you are intentionally restoring..

As for your question on black channels and your sys/emunand flip flopping.. You are making your setup WAY too complicated with all the EmuNANDS.

They have different folders because they are unlinked and independent of each other.

The black channels could be a lot of things... You have a ton of variables.. I would setup the SysNAND to be pretty much EVERYTHING and the EmuNAND JUST FOR Red Cart Games.......

 

[Deleted member 668561]

At this point in the 3ds scene, gateway is technically a cfw, it does most of the same things luma does, (cheats, homebrew, piracy, cia's)

The difference is with gateway you essentially add an additional microsd slot to the existing (red card is essentially a ctr to micro SD adapter) one (cfw could utilize if it was updated to)

Sky3ds and Stargate are strictly ctr card emulators, the hardware in the card itself handles the SD communication and file loading not the 3ds, you'll have to use an exploit like ninjahax or the like to get homebrew or install b9s+cfw, which is needed to allow region bypass and homebrew

Plus I haven't had any issue with gateway brick or if was even removed (I'm using 4.2) but if you have ntrboot and nand back up this is no worry either

I like gateways cheat system, and has a cheat engine style where you can edit memory in real-time

Plus I only need wait 5-10 min to write 10-20gb worth of software to the SD and boom I'm done, and not have to install cias for half a day, though now there's a way to install directly from PC I haven't looked into it yet



https://gbatemp.net/threads/gateway-gw3d-11-10-b9s-and-cfw.550040/

 

[retrospect]

...

At the moment I just want to access an existing GW EmuNAND in Gateway Mode (see my last two posts). The MicroSD card that this is on is not the same one that I currently use to run Luma3DS.

I also want to be sure that it won't boot SysNAND in Gateway Mode because apparently that would wipe out BS9. I might downgrade the SysNAND firmware first to be safe.

 

[mikefor20]

At the moment I just want to access an existing GW EmuNAND in Gateway Mode (see my last two posts). The MicroSD card that this is on is not the same one that I currently use to run Luma3DS.

I also want to be sure that it won't boot SysNAND in Gateway Mode because apparently that would wipe out BS9. I might downgrade the SysNAND firmware first to be safe.

Try this if you already have luma working and a valid GW EmuNAND.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-using-luma3ds-gateway-on-b9s.431691/

GW will boot in to the compatible EmuNAND if its there, otherwise it will boot in to SysNAND. It will warn you if its trying to boot to SysNAND and ask for a button combo to get to SysNAND. Just turn it off if that happens. It's safe...

Don't downgrade anything. I done told you.

 

[retrospect]

I got the dragon boot screen at last. I took another look at this, carefully checking all the files, and I noticed that the guide specifies some files from BootCTR9-firmv2.zip but it links to BootCTR9-firm-b9s1.2.zip. I did find BootCTR9-firmv2.zip elsewhere on the forums.

Files are:
\root\boot_config.ini (from BootCTR9-firmv2.zip linked in this post but overwritten with new text)
\root\Launcher.dat (from GW_4.2b.zip from Gateway's Private Beta Program page via archive.org)
\root\luma\payloads\down_BootCTR9.firm (from boot.firm in BootCTR9-firmv2.zip)
\root\luma\payloads\gateway.bin (from arm9loaderhax.bin from Gateway's Private Beta Program page via archive.org)
\root\luma\payloads\v2gw.bin (from v2gw.zip attached to the tutorial post)

And importantly, Luma 10.0.1 ignores d-pad boot instructions if you have it set to auto-boot EmuNAND. That was probably the only thing that was wrong.

Next problem: my GW EmuNAND doesn't run in GW Mode (yet).
It didn't run GW EmuNAND after that EmuNAND had been used without Gateway, but I re-restored it and now it's fine.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

try using this pack to boot
https://www.mediafire.com/file/xzs7efhraz9at2s/updates.rar/file

imho this version is much simpler since it uses a Firm payload for gateway (though you still need bootctr9 as luma chainloader can't boot it ), hold start while booting and it works every time, plus on 11.3+ you need patch the emunand via luma (hold select at boot and tick autoboot emunand) using sysupdater or you'll either break select functionality (to select files) or you'll black screen when trying to boot GW,

just make sure your launcher dat is on the root aswell

 

[noctis90210]

Please don't go in to GW threads and pretend you are helping by suggesting a full switch to luma. We know. We want both. Good day.

Im not talking to you AH.

 

[retrospect]

Thanks I'll have a play with that one too.

I'm quite pleased that I can run Gateway Mode without all the fiddling around that used to be needed. 3DS files are so much more convenient than CIAs.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Now that the 3DS has been discarded by Nintendo, it seems like a good time to make a permanent franken firmware. Is it possible to make a franken firmware that can run all games, including as .3ds files off my old Gateway cart? Would it need to be done as SysNAND or EmuNAND? Are there any guides for this? Both my NANDs are on 11.4 but I have backups of 9.0 for both which I imagine could be restored via BS9.

I think it could be a worthwhile one-off project (and a useful guide to exist online). It's not that I want to waste a load of time getting .3DS files to work, it's that I'd like to save a load of time avoiding bad CIAs

Am I right in thinking that BS9 makes the 3DS unbrickable - because you can always restore a NAND backup?

I don't know if all games are compatible with frankenfirm. Since some of the system titles can't be updated it's possible certain games will crash or fail to load when trying to access parts of the firmware that are missing or different in the frankenfirm. Anyway, Nintendo are still releasing firmware updates so it wouldn't be a lasting solution. Who knows if it's even possible to make a frankenfirm of the latest firmware. Nintendo might finally have updated the minimum required versions to only work with the latest kernel.
In theory, making a frankenfirm is pretty simple. With a working 11.6 frankenfirm and a backup, look at what titles have been updated since 11.6, and update them manually one by one rebooting after each. Once the system fails to boot you know the last title you installed is incompatible; manually patch the version of the 11.6 CIA of said title to match that of the latest version so the system thinks it's up to date. Rinse and repeat for each new/updated title. I think there were only a couple of titles that were incompatible and had to have the version spoofed, but that may have changed since. At the very least that will get online working (assuming nothing changed in the friends sysmodule that made older versions of it incompatible with online)
That's how the frankenfirm packs made by you know who were made, anyway.
It's just a lot of hassle for no good reason. Far easier to make the switch than go through all of that.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

https://gbatemp.net/threads/gateway-gw3d-11-10-b9s-and-cfw.550040/

Simply need to downgrade 5 cia's takes about 30 sec via sysupdater with the pack I provided above there is an update folder, search "gateway 11.7 emunand psxtools.de" to get the files as I cannot link them, just download corresponding to your system and just copy the update folder (you don't need anything else and you don't need the updates!)

 

[retrospect]

It's just a lot of hassle for no good reason. Far easier to make the switch than go through all of that.

I was thinking that if 11.2 SysNAND is easily exploitable and no games demand anything above 11.6, then SysNAND franken firmware based on 11.2 with bits of 11.6 has the advantages of being exploitable (just in case BS9 is ever wiped) and of being able to run all games. I understand that Nintendo might require something like 11.12 to get online, but I'm not that interested in online play on the 3DS. Is there any reason not to run 11.2 with bits of 11.6 on SysNAND? It's not a high priority, it just seems smarter than running 11.12.

 

[Deleted-236924]

and no games demand anything above 11.6

This is an assumption that has yet to be proven.

That being said, as long as the games that you personally care about playing work, that's all that matters.

Also I doubt you really gain anything from updating GW frankenfirm to higher FW, because the titles that matter the most aren't being updated anyway.

 

[retrospect]

This is an assumption that has yet to be proven.

According to 3DSDB and they have loads of data

 

[Deleted-236924]

According to 3DSDB and they have loads of data

3dsdb is missing pretty much everything that came out since September 2018.

 

[retrospect]

3dsdb is missing pretty much everything that came out since September 2018.

Oh right. They ought to mention that. Did anything come out since then?