Homebrew ARM9Loader -- Technical Details and Discussion

[shadowofdarkness]

Well it's arm9loaderhax.... the arm9loader binary is at the beginning of the n3ds firms so, yeah, n3ds firms are kinda needed since, ya know, without them there's nothing to hack

That is what I thought I read somewhere. I just need to figure out what I'm doing wrong getting this to work on my o3DS.

I did verify the sha256sums of the 3 files I used plus dumped my own otp.bin for use. My self compile of arm9loaderhax ends with no errors so it should be good.

I just want to hear from someone with first hand o3DS experience on if it worked for them.

 

[dark_samus3]

That is what I thought I read somewhere. I just need to figure out what I'm doing wrong getting this to work on my o3DS.

I did verify the sha256sums of the 3 files I used plus dumped my own otp.bin for use. My self compile of arm9loaderhax ends with no errors so it should be good.

I just want to hear from someone with first hand o3DS experience on if it worked for them.

Well no one has gotten any payloads booting (other than a few people who haven't said what they did to get it booting) so I'd recommend just backing your NAND up if you've got a hardmod and waiting a bit until some working payloads are released

 

[naivegirl2411]

There's only a certain number of keys on the 3DS, and all of them have been made public, and the way these keys are written, they can't be changed or updated by software. The only fix is to change the hardware, and even if they come out with a new hardware revision, that still leaves every current N3DS exploitable forever.

Arm9loaderhax runs before even the 3DS kernel starts. If you brick your sysNAND, you can still run ARM9 payloads, so it's easy to restore a backup, or even reinstall a new upgrade pack.

CN and OoT aren't used to downgrade, sysUpdater is used to downgrade. CN and OoT are used to execute code with enough privileges to run ARM9 code once you've downgraded to 2.x, because currently there's no other way to do so (though that may change very soon). Ironfall won't work on lower firmwares because the game depends on newer firmwares.

Thanks for the reply, to clarify one thing though: is this still new3ds only or by downgrading to get the OTP are we able to use this on any 3ds?

 

[dark_samus3]

Thanks for the reply, to clarify one thing though: is this still new3ds only or by downgrading to get the OTP are we able to use this on any 3ds?

by using the new3ds firm on o3ds it's possible on o3ds too

 

[Shadowtrance]

New3ds is a whole other beast in regards to the process.... not a fun process either lol

 

[dark_samus3]

New3ds is a whole other beast in regards to the process.... not a fun process either lol

All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not a n3ds user today

 

[naivegirl2411]

1) This isn't really about finding keys... also given that they don't have any other secret sectors (which MUST be installed at the factory) no this isn't patchable

2) yes, it does mean installing CIAs on sysNAND (which is already possible btw)... also since we can launch other payloads so early we can just restore NAND.bin files even if the system is totally broken by just replacing the arm9loaderhax.bin on the SD card with something that can restore NAND backups (like Decrypt9)

3) The devs are finding exploits in the browser, so given that we can choose what we have when we downgrade we can easily have browser once it's figured out (they've gotten further along already) also ironfall won't boot on anything lower than 9.5 iirc ( I know for sure it won't boot on 9.4 or below it's just 9.5 I'm not sure about)

Ah ok cool think I understand it better now, thank you for the reply

 

[Shadowtrance]

All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not a n3ds user today

lol then again, my o3ds isn't cooperating either tbh.

 

[dark_samus3]

lol then again, my o3ds isn't cooperating either tbh.

bad payloads are bad payloads...

 

[Shadowtrance]

bad payloads are bad payloads...

Possibly. I dunno how many payloads i can build before my fingers fall off though, tried just about every "brahma" payload i can think of and nothing will boot...

 

[shadowofdarkness]

Well no one has gotten any payloads booting (other than a few people who haven't said what they did to get it booting) so I'd recommend just backing your NAND up if you've got a hardmod and waiting a bit until some working payloads are released

I do have a backup and maybe I'm lucky and it would work with a good payload. I could see it not booting without a valid payload to firmlaunch a o3DS firmware.

 

[dark_samus3]

I do have a backup and maybe I'm lucky and it would work with a good payload. I could see it not booting without a valid payload to firmlaunch a o3DS firmware.

What I meant was, back up your a9loaderhaxed NAND and restore the good NAND backup so you can enjoy the console while waiting for the payloads to be worked out

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

Possibly. I dunno how many payloads i can build before my fingers fall off though, tried just about every "brahma" payload i can think of and nothing will boot...

<dark_samus_> mid-kid: could the reason the a9lh payloads are failing be that it relies upon screen stuff, so if it can't get it to init it won't work?
<fox8091_> dark_samus_: Oh yea! And also MCU stuff.
<mid-kid> dark_samus_: Could be. Depends on what's written in the position the offset of the framebuffers is read from.

 

[Zyrmkel]

so I've been trying to downgrade to 2.1. I was downgrading a emunand to test as the 3ds I'm currently working with doesn't have a hardmod. Downgrade goes well on emunand but the refuses to boot regardless if I remove the Nintendo3ds folder or not. I gave up with that and just downgraded my sysnand and 2.1 loads fine.

 

[dark_samus3]

so I've been trying to downgrade to 2.1. I was downgrading a emunand to test as the 3ds I'm currently working with doesn't have a hardmod. Downgrade goes well on emunand but the refuses to boot regardless if I remove the Nintendo3ds folder or not. I gave up with that and just downgraded my sysnand and 2.1 loads fine.

you were probably using the wrong firmware.bin, (which contains NATIVE_FIRM) the titles check which NATIVE_FIRM is being booted and if it's too low or high they refuse to boot

 

[Zyrmkel]

ah, that does make sense.

 

[shadowofdarkness]

What I meant was, back up your a9loaderhaxed NAND and restore the good NAND backup so you can enjoy the console while waiting for the payloads to be worked out

I know that I what I meant also.

 

[Vappy]

emuNAND 2.1 won't work, because there are no emuNAND patches written to handle it, and probably never will be, due to how different 2.1 firm is to 3.0 onward, and how small the benefit would be.

 

[MassExplosion213]

Just a heads up, screen stuff and MCU are problematic in payloads.

 

[Columbo2811]

Just a heads up, screen stuff and MCU are problematic in payloads.

Mass have you got this to work yet. Do you have a payload that does something. I'm at the same point as everyone else with nothing booting.

 

[dark_samus3]

So I was looking through payloads that might be easy/nice to modify for a9lh and ReiNAND looks like the best candidate... I'll have to look into the o3ds mod and see if I can get source (since most people who've got it installed have an o3ds) I should have a payload up sometime in the future, not sure when or if someone will beat me to it