Hardware fault question

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skawo

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I have a n3DSXL which crashes when bumped.
Sometimes, the 3DS doesn't boot - it shows a purple light without an SD card, and a red light with the SD card in (even if the luma firm is in place - probably because it can't read the settings from the nand?) Sometimes, even if the luma setting screen loads, then "CTRNAND couldn't be loaded" is shown.

I have isolated the issue to a NAND chip bga failure - if I put some cardboard shims to put pressure on the board where the NAND chip is located, the 3DS seems stable. For now, at least.
I've been wondering what could my options for this be:

1. Can the NAND be redirected to the SD card? I know there used to be RedNAND/Emunand for this once upon a time, but pretty much everything says they're deprecated now - so much so that I cannot even locate a guide that would go over how you achieve such a thing.
2. Is it worth trying to reflow the NAND chip?
3. Could the NAND be replaced with an SD card internally (with soldering, like on the WiiU)? If so, what steps would have to be taken?
4. Failing that, I have a spare 3DS board, but it doesn't have the cartridge slot connector. Does the D-Pad have test points, so I could just jump those connections?
 
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Hey, I recognize your username from Youtube ;)

I can only answer for 1., you can use a console without NAND, but then you are forced to use NTRBOOT everytime to boot into Luma and use Emunand (bootROM searches for the FIRM on NAND after checking for NTRBOOT and SPIBOOT). It's not that Emunand is deprecated, rather it has no use other than very specific cases like this one.
 
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I see... so boot9strap absolutely requires NAND access? I thought it went to the SD card, first and foremost... That's unfortunate, then.
 

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