Hacking It's a Hardmod Life...

[ArugulaZ]

I asked in the Noob thread and I scoured Google, but none of the answers I could find were satisfactory, so here goes. Could somebody explain to me hardmods, how they work, and the benefits and risks involved?

All I understand for sure is that four pins are soldered into the 3DS, letting the user flash the firmware at will with a specially modified SD card. What I DON'T understand is everything after that. What's the difference between Sysnand and Emunand? Will I be able to use my 3DS for both homebrew and the services offered by Nintendo? What about CIAs? Is there any risk involved in installing them, and does it offer access to homebrew straight from the home screen rather than the Homebrew Browser?

All of this is probably stupidly elementary for those in the scene, but I've only softmodded my 3DS and have little experience beyond soft mods. I added a mod chip to my Sega Saturn and clipped the 10NES pin off my NES, and that's about it. If you could give me an easy to understand outline for the hardmod process and what I could expect from it, I would be extremely grateful. I don't savor the thought of spending fifty dollars and losing my 3DS for a month to have a procedure done that I might regret later. Anything you could do to soothe my worries (or convince me not to do this) would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[DKB]

SysNand is the native firmware that you don't touch unless you know what you're doing or you'll screw the 3DS.

Emunand is the emulated firmware on the SD card that you can mess up, since you can always bring it back with a backup like nothing.

You will be able to use Nintendo's services on SysNand/Emunand whenever you want.

CIAs are just the game on in a installer package thing, and unless a CIA looks odd, no risk of anything unless the CIA was made to jack up your 3DS. With the homebrew launcher CIA, you can launch it directly from the home screen, so yeah.

Hardmod stuff I'm clueless in and I just scripped the screws on my 3DS a few minutes ago..

 

[thatbooisaspy]

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[izy]

Hardmod stuff I'm clueless in and I just scripped the screws on my 3DS a few minutes ago..

What do you expect you have been Scripping screws xD

What I DON'T understand is everything after that.
What's the difference between Sysnand and Emunand?
Will I be able to use my 3DS for both homebrew and the services offered by Nintendo?
What about CIAs? Is there any risk involved in installing them, and does it offer access to homebrew straight from the home screen rather than the Homebrew Browser?

SySnand is the Firmware on the 3DS (aka its harddrive soldered onboard)
Emunand is basically Just the Same as your 3DS firmware but on your SD card so it doesnt touch your system
This allows Homew to be Run and you can Run nintendo services (online,store etc)
CIAs are just Games Repackaged to install on the 3DS Homescreen, they work exactly like store Games
Yes a Bunch of homebrew have CIA versions that you can run straight from the HomeMenu, or you can launch Homebrew loader from menu instead of broswer
You can also AUTOBOOT into CFW when turn your 3DS on.

Hard Mods risks are only damaging your 3DS console and SYSNAND

The only real benefits are for UNBRICKING your 3DS if you tamper with sysnand, or downgrading your 3DS to a hackable Firmware version
Its not really needed otherwise

 

[DKB]

Hardmod =/= homebrew

You exactly pinned down what a hardmod is, it's a modified sd card setup that exploits four pins on the 3ds motherboard to flash the NAND, then you got lost after that. Let me explain from the ground up:

NAND is the internal flash filesystem inside the 3DS, it's the chip connected to the pins you modify. You regularly hear the term "emunand" thrown around here, those are "emulated nands" where we can redirect the NAND to allow us to basically emulate the filesystem, in a sense.

However the hardmod is only useful if you have a backup of your NAND, which can only be accomplished if you have CFW. CFW means custom firmware, only runnable at FW (firmware) 9.2 or below. This allows us to do crazy things like install CIAs (games, in the simplest definition of the term). It uses "kernel access" (by exploits, hence why it's only available on older, unpatched firmwares) which we can also use to do things like NAND dumps for use in hardmods if we accidentally brick our device.

If you still can't figure out what sysnand means now, it means the original NAND on your device. On your question if we will still be offered Nintendo services, thats a lot of answers:

• People capable of running emuNAND will always be on the latest firmware, which of course allows us stuff like eshop and online play
• People NOT capable of running emuNAND and only is allowed userland access (no cfw) is limited by their firmware version, 10.4 (?) and are not allowed to use the browser or online play. Only people on the current FW are allowed to use the eshop.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask as I probably haven't covered a lot of subjects.

You can install legit CIA's on higher firmwares, just adding on.

 

[thatbooisaspy]

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[ArugulaZ]

ThatBooIsASpy: I appreciate the information, from you and everyone else who responded. What I planned to do was send my system to an expert, so they could do the mod properly. I could probably fake it with the proper instructions, but I don't have a soldering iron handy and the risk of bricking is far, far higher than if I asked a more experienced user to do it. A New 3DS is much too expensive for me to take that possible risk.

The current plan is to have the modder set the system up so I can run both homebrew and online services without any hassle, and without any worries of Nintendo reversing their work. A strictly no-fuss operation on the user's end, basically. I'll add CIAs myself provided it's no more difficult than what I was doing with the soft mods. The system is at 10.5 right now, but I understand it can be downgraded using the hardmod. I'd just rather having someone else do the tricky stuff, even if I have to pay them for it.