Hacking Longevity of a Sky3DS?

[Gamemaster1379]

This focuses strictly on hardware within a Sky3DS and does not touch on firmware updates by Nintendo

Off and on lately I've seen various bits of information pop up about the Sky3DS, and not long ago I saw a diagram loosely explaining the workings of how Sky3DS works. From what I gathered, more or less the cartridge has an SD card with ROMs that are flashed to some sort of onboard storage that behaves (or is some replication thereof) of the internal storage found in retail Nintendo 3DS cartridges.

Now, the question I have is this: Given that SKY3DS uses similar (or exact, I don't know) hardware that is found in retail 3DS cartrdiges, what kind of lifespan can be expected out of such a cartridge?

I ask this because most Nintendo 3DS cartridges I would assume are engineered with little or no consideration in being rewritten. That I'd understand, would most 3DS carts get flashed once during production and that be it? (I say this realizing the exception of card2 games, but those are only writing small bits of save data, rather than an entire game). And in that respect, I imagine that card2 games on SKY3DS would also mean additional writes still.

tl;dr: Basically, is the SKY3DS's life going to be compromised by the constant writing of games (when cycling through with the button and/or card2 saves)?

 

[tony_2018]

There are discussion on similar topics of "longevity" in other threads. You should read what we all had to say about both what GW is doing and what Sky3ds did wrong.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

There are discussion on similar topics of "longevity" in other threads. You should read what we all had to say about both what GW is doing and what Sky3ds did wrong.

I hadn't seen anything about the constant rewriting of the cart. I'm very much aware of the whole "software" potential aspect and the supposed claim of new cart for new bypass.

 

[Bug_Checker_]

This focuses strictly on hardware within a Sky3DS and does not touch on firmware updates by Nintendo

Off and on lately I've seen various bits of information pop up about the Sky3DS, and not long ago I saw a diagram loosely explaining the workings of how Sky3DS works. From what I gathered, more or less the cartridge has an SD card with ROMs that are flashed to some sort of onboard storage that behaves (or is some replication thereof) of the internal storage found in retail Nintendo 3DS cartridges.

Now, the question I have is this: Given that SKY3DS uses similar (or exact, I don't know) hardware that is found in retail 3DS cartrdiges, what kind of lifespan can be expected out of such a cartridge?

I ask this because most Nintendo 3DS cartridges I would assume are engineered with little or no consideration in being rewritten. That I'd understand, would most 3DS carts get flashed once during production and that be it? (I say this realizing the exception of card2 games, but those are only writing small bits of save data, rather than an entire game). And in that respect, I imagine that card2 games on SKY3DS would also mean additional writes still.

tl;dr: Basically, is the SKY3DS's life going to be compromised by the constant writing of games (when cycling through with the button and/or card2 saves)?

Unless you do something incredibly stupid with the Sky3DS like submerging it in liquids and then turning it on before it's completely dried out or zapping it with static(or any other type of) electricity. The electronics(unless defective) should last a "normal" lifespan.

What is gonna die a horrible death is the mechanical button. That thing is doomed and then it is repair/replace or live with only access to 1 rom ("Where is your GOD,now?")

 

[Veho]

Assuming it uses NOR flash memory, the life cycle should be over 100,000 rewrites. If it applies wearout management then the life cycle can be extended several fold. However, wearout management requires redundant memory space and that increases the cost.

 

[Deleted User]

- Mechanical button: 100.000 cycles
- SPI NOR savegames: 100.000 write cycles
- SD socket roms: 10.000 eject cycles

These are all what manufacturers say by default. But from experience like one user mentioned above, they are much lower

 

[HEX1GON]

So the button isn't a microswitch?

 

[Veho]

So the button isn't a microswitch?

That's still a mechanical switch.

 

[HEX1GON]

Yeah I get that, but does it use a micro switch or a spring loaded button?

 

[Kyohack]

I haven't looked at scans of the internals of the cart, so I don't know for certain how it works.

However, I would like to point out that it's possible (and extremely likely) that the ROMs are not written to any internal storage, and the cart (theoretically) should have just as long of a life cycle as a real cart, if not longer. Most flashcarts are just FPGAs (basically processors) that mimic the function of a storage medium by reading ROM data from micro sd and outputting it through the game card data IO pins using whatever proprietary AES encryption protocol Nintendo has on the 3DS carts.

EDIT:
Actually yeah, it does have an SPI chip for save data, doesn't it? The lifetime of the cart pretty much relies on that, then.

 

[Ralph1611]

Can someone please explain EEPROM YES or NO for me?

Most of my games are YES.. only Pokemon Sapphire and Ruby are NO.

I am getting the blue one in the mail in few days.. i have 20 games on my microSD card already.

i dont plan to remove the games at all... i think those are the 20 ill be busy with for a long time..

so is all the YESEEPROM bad? im new to this.

 

[philipx99]

Can someone please explain EEPROM YES or NO for me?

Most of my games are YES.. only Pokemon Sapphire and Ruby are NO.

I am getting the blue one in the mail in few days.. i have 20 games on my microSD card already.

i dont plan to remove the games at all... i think those are the 20 ill be busy with for a long time..

so is all the YESEEPROM bad? im new to this.

Can someone please explain EEPROM YES or NO for me?

Most of my games are YES.. only Pokemon Sapphire and Ruby are NO.

I am getting the blue one in the mail in few days.. i have 20 games on my microSD card already.

i dont plan to remove the games at all... i think those are the 20 ill be busy with for a long time..

so is all the YESEEPROM bad? im new to this.

Writing eeprom yes is not bad. Actually the gameplay and save are more stable .for this method, you can only limit to 10 time of write because of the design.

 

[migles]

Assuming it uses NOR flash memory

i don't think its a nor memory, it would be a lot slow to write all the data... or it doesnt?

 

[Jayro]

I've been curious lately about how retail carts fair against a Gateway cart and a Sky3DS cart in terms of battery life:

NO GAME INSERTED: With no game inserted to the slot, I get about a day and a half of standby time.
RETAIL 3DS CART: With a retail 3DS game inserted and detected by the menu, I get about 24 hours of standby time.
R4I GOLD 3DS CART: With my R4i 3DS Gold (RTS) DS flash cart, It gets drastically cut down to about 9 hours, maybe 10. (I have not tested a retail DS/DSi cart yet)

So now I typically keep my R4i cart inserted, but still ejected, and I get StreetPass time that lasts me more than a day's worth of traveling on a single charge. I only push the cart down to play games, and partially eject it when I'm done.

 

[gamesquest1]

i feel we should clarify, that "diagram" than involved "writing the "f**king game" etc was complete rubbish, the game loads from the SD, only the saves are stored on the onboard memory

- Mechanical button: 100.000 cycles
- SPI NOR savegames: 100.000 write cycles
- SD socket roms: 10.000 eject cycles

These are all what manufacturers say by default. But from experience like one user mentioned above, they are much lower

even if the actual buttons life span may be 100,000 presses, but as one user already reported after a while the button just fell off inside.....so the amount of usage depends on the build quality of the card itself

 

[Arithmatics]

i don't think its a nor memory, it would be a lot slow to write all the data... or it doesnt?

I'm pretty sure it uses NOR. It's only needed to execute code and NOR is brilliant at it. Writing data is handled by EEPROM which I assume is a must for any and every cartridge in existence.

I've been curious lately about how retail carts fair against a Gateway cart and a Sky3DS cart in terms of battery life:

NO GAME INSERTED: With no game inserted to the slot, I get about a day and a half of standby time.
RETAIL 3DS CART: With a retail 3DS game inserted and detected by the menu, I get about 24 hours of standby time.
R4I GOLD 3DS CART: With my R4i 3DS Gold (RTS) DS flash cart, It gets drastically cut down to about 9 hours, maybe 10. (I have not tested a retail DS/DSi cart yet)

So now I typically keep my R4i cart inserted, but still ejected, and I get StreetPass time that lasts me more than a day's worth of traveling on a single charge. I only push the cart down to play games, and partially eject it when I'm done.

You tried Sky3DS or Gateway tho?

i feel we should clarify, that "diagram" than involved "writing the "f**king game" etc was complete rubbish, the game loads from the SD, only the saves are stored on the onboard memory


even if the actual buttons life span may be 100,000 presses, but as one user already reported after a while the button just fell off inside.....so the amount of usage depends on the build quality of the card itself

and how hard you push. I'm pretty sure that user was too rough. Unless more users shed light on their respective carts.

 

[Jayro]

You tried Sky3DS or Gateway tho?

I don't have either one, so I was curious if any had tested them yet.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

I don't have either one, so I was curious if any had tested them yet.

I can attest to casual use throughout a day (maybe 2 hours tops with no wireless, rest of time on idle) will yield less than 9 hours off the charger.

 

[Jayro]

I can attest to casual use throughout a day (maybe 2 hours tops with no wireless, rest of time on idle) will yield less than 9 hours off the charger.

Thank you.