Hacking Did I Fry My Sky3DS?

[drfsupercenter]

So I had something happen that I can't seem to fix.

I've been using my Sky3DS with the same set of 8 games for the past month and until a couple days ago it was working fine. One problem that's always happened is if I bump the blue button while my system is closed, it just flickers the LED forever, I have to eject the cart and pop it back in to stop it from doing that. Usually nothing happens, since I rarely put it in sleep mode with a Sky3DS game suspended, only eShop ones.

Anyway, I was going through my daily StreetPass relay haul when my copy of Nintendogs gave me a message that the save was corrupted and was going to be deleted. I tried popping it in my other 3DS, running a CFW and SaveDataFiler, it showed as "broken"

Just to see if there was any hope of recovery, and if it happened to be some funky problem with the MicroSD, I backed up the save using the DiskWriter program, then grabbed a different MicroSD, put just that ROM on and restored the save.

I did what I usually do when switching cards (and the DiskWriter program tells you to as well) - hold the blue button while inserting the SKy3DS, which causes it to not attempt to load anything, then eject it and put it back in, press the button if needed. But this time, nothing happened. I put the old card back in, tried the steps again, nothing.

The result is that with either MicroSD in there, I put the Sky3DS in my 3DS and the blue LED flashes once and that's it - nothing shows in the card slot. I've tried inserting it with the button held a few times too, that isn't working anymore. I even took the Sky3DS out of my system and let it sit for a couple hours in case that would somehow magically fix it.

What else can I try at this point? I'm sure there has to be some way to get it to read the ROMs again...

 

[sarkwalvein]

If there was no oil or fat involved it may be toasted, but not fried.

 

[drfsupercenter]

OK, so it looks like it just doesn't like that other MicroSD. The light is just a solid blue for a second or so before it shuts off and nothing happens. I did my original one to work again though.

I guess I'll try a third...

 

[DSpider]

Yeah, it sounds like it's a microSD issue.

Be careful not to use a cheap Chinese microSD reader. A buddy of mine fried his really expensive Sandisk Extreme 64 GB (which costs a lot of money) with a $2 no-name adaptor.

 

[GaaraPrime]

Yeah, it sounds like it's a microSD issue.

Be careful not to use a cheap Chinese microSD reader. A buddy of mine fried his really expensive Sandisk Extreme 64 GB (which a lot of money) with a $2 no-name adaptor.

I've been telling this to people for a VERY LONG TIME NOW. It really makes me wonder how people can spend so much money on expensive MicroSD cards and yet use some shitty cheap chinese adapter to copy stuff.

Just spend $8 to $10 on a good quality BRANDED MicroSD reader and you'll get some really good speeds on your MicroSD cards

 

[thorasgar]

I've been telling this to people for a VERY LONG TIME NOW. It really makes me wonder how people can spend so much money on expensive MicroSD cards and yet use some shitty cheap chinese adapter to copy stuff.

Just spend $8 to $10 on a good quality BRANDED MicroSD reader and you'll get some really good speeds on your MicroSD cards

I agree completely. Even the reader on my HP printer started getting flakey.

However, even the branded mSD readers are still made in China.

 

[drfsupercenter]

I have a Plugable branded card reader. Made in China like everything else, but it's pretty high quality. Never had any issues with it.

It's probably just that particular card that went bad. It's an old one that I've had for years, there's a reason I haven't used it for other things


On that note though... I wonder what would cause the game's save to just corrupt itself like that. Of the 8 games, ONLY Nintendogs got corrupted, the other 7 work just fine still. When I backed up the save, it had SOME data, it wasn't all 0xFF like a fresh ROM, but about half the file was 0xFF and the other half had data. I would assume a non-corrupted save is almost entirely full of data.

 

[mgrev]

I've been telling this to people for a VERY LONG TIME NOW. It really makes me wonder how people can spend so much money on expensive MicroSD cards and yet use some shitty cheap chinese adapter to copy stuff.

Just spend $8 to $10 on a good quality BRANDED MicroSD reader and you'll get some really good speeds on your MicroSD cards

well, at my place the cheapest sd card reader u can get is 60 dollars

 

[drfsupercenter]

well, at my place the cheapest sd card reader u can get is 60 dollars

Wow, would be cheaper to just order one from America and have it sent to you. Want one relayed? They're like $10 here LOL

 

[mgrev]

Wow, would be cheaper to just order one from America and have it sent to you. Want one relayed? They're like $10 here LOL

ill probably buy from amazon

 

[GaaraPrime]

I agree completely. Even the reader on my HP printer started getting flakey.

However, even the branded mSD readers are still made in China.

You know what I mean. I didn't mean every made in china product is crap. One of my branded MicroSD card readers is from Sony, and it's one of the BEST MicroSD card readers that I've ever owned. It's been 5+ years now and still going strong and that's Made in China

well, at my place the cheapest sd card reader u can get is 60 dollars

Damn! 60 dollars is too much. Why don't you import one?

 

[drfsupercenter]

Well that was just strange.

I own a retail copy of Nintendogs as well, and since it's a launch title and uses the oldest save encryption, there isn't any unique encryption per cart.

So anyway, I used my NDS Adaptor Plus (the HK EMS USB dongle) to save the save from my Sky3DS with the game mounted (essentailly the same data as using DiskWriter to do it, but without the few bytes at the start), and wrote it to the retail cart. As expected, it gave me the same message about it being corrupted. But I then popped the retail cart into my Powersaves dongle and used the only code they offer (the "max cash" one), magically it worked again.

The reason I had to use the dongles at all is that, while Powersaves *does* usually work with the Sky3DS (at least if you're using a valid header through SkyTempIDEdit), since my save was technically corrupted it kept glitching out and showing my backed up save for a second, then saying "no cartridge", then repeating about 20 times before saying "incompatible game"

So I'm not sure what caused my save to corrupt itself, but I got it to work again ironically just by hacking my cash amount which probably fixed the internal checksum and rendered it not corrupted. Shrug. Either way, if it happens to anyone else you have something you can possibly try. Only for CARD1 games, though. Hopefully CARD2 won't break as easily since the save is stored inside the ROM itself.

Edit: Actually, I was wrong about the Powersaves software. It works with CARD2 games, provided you have a valid header (I tried without, it will read the cart and try to apply the cheats, but then it fails halfway through)
But CARD1 games do not work whether you have a header or not. Probably just has to do with how the hardware emulates the EEPROM. The NDS Adaptor Plus, luckily, does work with Sky3DS but not Powersaves. TMYK