Homebrew Noob question - factory reset on 3ds?

[IvanB]

Apologies in advance if this is a noob question. Couldn't one downgrade the home menu version back to the original that came with the 3ds console by performing some sort of factory reset? My android phone does this for example. Then one would block the upgrades via your router?

 

[br3compactor]

A factory reset doesn't clear the updated firmware, unfortunately...

There is no way to go back to a previous firmware if you're on the recent ones.

 

[randomdev]

Sorry but you can't. If you have a 4.x - 9.2 nand backup then you can hardmod your 3ds to perform a backup.

 

[IvanB]

Obviously I don't understand enough about the hardware here but there must be an "engineering mode" where if you were a service technician for Nintendo you could wipe the whole operating system/data then reload the factory setup. Or does this essentialy require "rooting" the console and we are stuck in userland. I'm pretty upset being stuck with 10.2 now just thinking aloud

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Obviously I don't understand enough about the hardware here but there must be an "engineering mode" where if you were a service technician for Nintendo you could wipe the whole operating system/data then reload the factory setup. Or does this essentialy require "rooting" the console and we are stuck in userland. I'm pretty upset being stuck with 10.2 now just thinking aloud

Nintendo has all the encryption keys, and special hardware used to flash consoles, they can flash the system with whatever firmware version they want. We don't have access to the encryption keys therefore we can't do that. Even Nintendo themselves would never downgrade a console, only update it.