After a couple consecutive freezes/crashes on the cia version of mGBA this week, my N3DSXL was failing to boot. I began getting the black screen with blue power light and red notification light for 1-2 seconds; without SD card the same symptoms but with a magenta notification light. In either case I am unable to get into the Luma/GM9 startup menus by holding Select/Start. I do not hear any pop from the speakers indicating a hardware issue. All signs pointed to a corrupted boot file on the SD and in the system memory.
I replaced the boot files on the root of my SD with a fresh copy of the same version of Luma (13.0.2), and it ran fine for about 36 hours until I had another freeze in mGBA, followed by the exact same boot failures and symptoms. Again I replaced my 13.0.2 boot files, but this time it did not work and I could not successfully boot, so I downloaded the most recent version of Luma (13.1.2) and replaced the boot files with 13.1.2's without any luck; still stuck not booting. I have no issues accessing the files on the SD card via Windows, and the card passes h2testw with no errors (although it is not empty, so the result could be a false negative).
After reading a bunch of threads here and on Reddit, as well as the troubleshooting guides on 3ds hacks, I went out and bought a new microSD card this morning, formatted to FAT32/32kb and checked the new freshly formatted, empty card with h2testw - no errors. I put only the 13.1.2 boot files on the root of the new card and tried to boot but same issue - black screen, power light for 1-2 seconds with the red notification light.
At this point, I am not sure what to try or what the error could be beyond hardware. Considering the issue is consistent across multiple cards, I doubt that the issue is with the original SD card. Perhaps an issue with the SD card reader, but I am not sure how that would happen since on my model it is centrally located under the backplate rather than along the edge like on the 2DSXL. Any suggestions/feedback is appreciated!
I replaced the boot files on the root of my SD with a fresh copy of the same version of Luma (13.0.2), and it ran fine for about 36 hours until I had another freeze in mGBA, followed by the exact same boot failures and symptoms. Again I replaced my 13.0.2 boot files, but this time it did not work and I could not successfully boot, so I downloaded the most recent version of Luma (13.1.2) and replaced the boot files with 13.1.2's without any luck; still stuck not booting. I have no issues accessing the files on the SD card via Windows, and the card passes h2testw with no errors (although it is not empty, so the result could be a false negative).
After reading a bunch of threads here and on Reddit, as well as the troubleshooting guides on 3ds hacks, I went out and bought a new microSD card this morning, formatted to FAT32/32kb and checked the new freshly formatted, empty card with h2testw - no errors. I put only the 13.1.2 boot files on the root of the new card and tried to boot but same issue - black screen, power light for 1-2 seconds with the red notification light.
At this point, I am not sure what to try or what the error could be beyond hardware. Considering the issue is consistent across multiple cards, I doubt that the issue is with the original SD card. Perhaps an issue with the SD card reader, but I am not sure how that would happen since on my model it is centrally located under the backplate rather than along the edge like on the 2DSXL. Any suggestions/feedback is appreciated!
