Hacking Question about arm9hax

[funnystory]

You've never heard of the 3DS itself, then. Even an unmodified console requires the SD card to be present in order to do anything of consequence with it. That's where theme data lives, where eshop games live, where extdata such as game patches and updates live, even some cartridge games assume the presence of an SD card and save their data there rather than onboard memory.

If you wanted a piece of hardware with zero hard dependencies on removable storage, then you bought the wrong console.

I have used the 3ds and If I remove the sd card I can boot into my sysnand like its nothing. I could provide a video if you would like to prove it. If you do the samething with arm9hax you have yourself a soft brick. The fact that you need an SD card to do most things on it doesn't mean it is a necessity,I can still access my system without the SDcard. I have the o3ds and the n3ds,point is that arm9hax dramatically alters the way in which the n3ds operates. Whether you mind or not is a completely different subject,you are changing the subject to support your argument. There is no argument to be had here,take out the SD card and your 3ds is a paper weight,with menuhax I take out my SD card and I can still play 3ds games without saving(original that is).

The fact is that your 3ds is a semi-brick without the SDcard,to me that doesn't sound like a good trade off for an extra 10 seconds of booting. Your 3ds will not even turn on without an SDcard in it,to me that screams a sloppy hack. There is risk in installing arm9 and zero reward,because even if you properly install the hack you removed part of the systems features for no benefit.

At the end of the day it is personal preference and I obviously expect people that went through all the trouble of installing arm9 are going to give me a million justifications on why it is better,matter of fact is that you are handicapping your system for a minor upgrade.If I wanted to give my 3ds to a small child their is ZERO posibility of them bricking the console unusable, if you sell that arm9 console on ebay for instance the buyer can always claim you sold him a brick and at that point paypal is going to side with the buyer and not with you.It is a FACT that you removed core functionality from your 3ds and not a matter of opinion.

Anyways, I do not expect you to accept this as I know it is a matter of ego at this point and not reason. People like to argue on here even when they know they are wrong as a matter of ego,however all it takes to see the light is to remove the SDcard from your 3ds and you will see that it won't work. It is the equivalent of wearing a wig to conceal balding and calling it "regrowing hair" The truth is that underneath the wig(arm9hax) you are still bald as opposed to using rogaine/propecia where the hair is naturally yours.

 

[dpad_5678]

menuhax also requires an sd during boot. Im not sure where you're going with this.

That is wrong. If menuhax is installed, and you power on the system without an SD card, the system will still function fine.

 

[Deleted User]

if you sell that arm9 console on ebay for instance the buyer can always claim you sold him a brick and at that point paypal is going to side with the buyer and not with you.It is a FACT that you removed core functionality from your 3ds and not a matter of opinion.

It's all apples and oranges. People will do what they want to do. Though honestly, selling a hacked console is already a weird grey area. People buying it should understand the underlying hack and how to maintain it. Doing such a thing without the user knowing is poor form and I've seen a lot of it from Craigslist (people sell WiiU's with bricked vWii's) and the user is never the wiser until they attempt a WiiU firmware update. (by then the seller is long gone)

Even selling through eBay is pretty sketchy as modified consoles or "items that enable piracy" are on their no-sell list. (You can sell it on 9.2.0-20U) As well as Paypal would side with the buyer as you made "unauthorized modifciations" to the console itself.

Though long story short, if you made a NAND backup from before A9LH, you can just flash that back before it's sold. So that way you have a stock 9.2.0-20U sysnand with nothing else.

I'm not here to convince anyone of the better. Different strokes, for different folks. Whatever floats your boat.

 

[funnystory]

It's all apples and oranges. People will do what they want to do. Though honestly, selling a hacked console is already a weird grey area. People buying it should understand the underlying hack and how to maintain it. Doing such a thing without the user knowing is poor form and I've seen a lot of it from Craigslist (people sell WiiU's with bricked vWii's) and the user is never the wiser until they attempt a WiiU firmware update. (by then the seller is long gone)

Even selling through eBay is pretty sketchy as modified consoles or "items that enable piracy" are on their no-sell list. (You can sell it on 9.2.0-20U) As well as Paypal would side with the buyer as you made "unauthorized modifciations" to the console itself.

Though long story short, if you made a NAND backup from before A9LH, you can just flash that back before it's sold. So that way you have a stock 9.2.0-20U sysnand with nothing else.

I'm not here to convince anyone of the better. Different strokes, for different folks. Whatever floats your boat.

Can vwii be fixed with a system update? IS there anyway to fix it? That is complete filth that someone would sell a wii u with a bricked vwii,how they managed to brick it is beyond me.My wiiu doesnt have vwii hacked because i already own a wii and dolphin so there would really be no point.

 

[FenrirWolf]

IIRC, vWii bricks can sometimes make it so the entire WiiU console is rendered unable to update, depending on exactly what they did to cause the brick. In the case of a banner brick from a malformed channel, I don't think it would cause that. But if they did something silly like deleting an IOS or installing a Wii IOS in place of the proper vWii IOS, then things get more hairy. Especially if it was IOS80 (the system menu IOS) that they thought was a good idea to mess with for some reason.

 

[Deleted User]

Can vwii be fixed with a system update? IS there anyway to fix it? That is complete filth that someone would sell a wii u with a bricked vwii,how they managed to brick it is beyond me.My wiiu doesnt have vwii hacked because i already own a wii and dolphin so there would really be no point.

At this point, no. Fixing it depends on the underlying issue. Sometimes there's CIOS left to recover from and perhaps the person didn't know any better. Sometimes the system is unrecoverable (say they install Wii IOS on vWii) and won't boot at all. The WiiU system update will check the vWII IOS lists and if it detects an issue, will abort the update)

So the poor sap who perhaps finds a console cheap won't know any better unless they try to run Wii games, or they update the console to find out they can't do so. Trust me, you think it's hard to manage, all it takes is one look at my posting history and blog to realize how often it happens. People follow old guides, install what they "feel" will work.

There was a time you could use a disc update to fix vWii, but that assumed that vWii titles have been updated or changed, and that hasn't happened since 4.1

 

[funnystory]

At this point, no. Fixing it depends on the underlying issue. Sometimes there's CIOS left to recover from and perhaps the person didn't know any better. Sometimes the system is unrecoverable (say they install Wii IOS on vWii) and won't boot at all. The WiiU system update will check the vWII IOS lists and if it detects an issue, will abort the update)

So the poor sap who perhaps finds a console cheap won't know any better unless they try to run Wii games, or they update the console to find out they can't do so. Trust me, you think it's hard to manage, all it takes is one look at my posting history and blog to realize how often it happens. People follow old guides, install what they "feel" will work.

I am acting all shocked that people do this but now that I think about it it is the exact same thing with the xbox 360s,people used to sell 360s that were banned from xbox live. I guess craigslist is probably the worst place to get a console.

 

[Classicgamer]

As stated above the reason is for example if you wanted to switch payloads you'd be forced to restore a Nand backup and reflash firm0/1 over again. That comes with its own inherent risks of bricking. Also there's a good chance that there isn't enough space in the firm0/1 partitions for the payload.

In that case if you flashed a payload to firm0/1 and it had an issue or problem, you've caused yourself a brick as at that point you have a non-bootable console with no recovery short of hard modding. So it becomes a cyclic issue.

Since there are no private signing keys available, you won't be seeing a "true CFW" any time soon.

The best case at this point is to just load from SD. There's no real speed penalty to doing so and you can swap payloads at the drop of a hat.

The n3ds would only be a brick if you had no arm9haxloader.bin on the SD. Though personally I keep a folder on the Unit with different payloads and just use the file manager to move them around if necessary.

That and if at some point you don't want A9LH you just restore your SysNAND. To me it just seems installing on the nand just makes things worse as the worst case scenario becomes more likely. All it takes in that's case is maybe a bad compile or compiler errors and you have yourself a brick.

I'm pretty sure you don't change the a9lh, only change the payload on the msd.

 

[Deleted User]

I'm pretty sure you don't change the a9lh, only change the payload on the msd.

If you read the earlier posts you would see he's asking why we don't load the payloads directly to NAND instead of an SD.

If that were true, the payload would need to be included when you adjust firm0/firm1 each time.

 

[magusss]

Hey, guys, sorry for ressurect this thread, and sorry for my bad english.

i've been reading this thread, and i'll try explain my current situation, and you ppl will see any sense on kill SD need, OR, at least try to help me with some way to use SD to just boot O3DS.

That's the point. I'm playing Fire Emblem, played Awakening, and playing now, "Fates edition". The main problem on this, is the fact i'm havin SD read failures during gameplay, and i need to have some persistence to make it read the SDcard again.

Not sure why this happens, but the fact is: 3DS seem to make constant SD reading, no matter what you're doing, and i hardly have ways to know if it's a defective MicroSD Card, or if it is a defective SD slot..

The point here is about not killing totally SD dependency, it's about to make it "less needed". that's the point. there is no way to make it do boot check only, and to make games and saves going to internal 3DS storage?

As far i understand it, any softmod relies constantly on SD read and writing, and on arm9loader case, i just need a way to install games on true sysnand and for the saves, at least to make SD reading and writing just when it's needed (just when you're saving and loading only).

I think that's the main problem here, it's not really a mess if you can't boot with no SD card, it's nothing too destructive, provided you did backups, it's ridiculously easy to make backups nowadays, oh god, i'm not surprised if i had payload and full hack backups on mars cloudsaving or interdimensional backup services, the problem is to make constant reading from those SD cards, and my problem can happen with anyone, because SD failures is not a rare thing.

And when it comes to Wii, if memory serves me well, it was still possible to play your games, even the "backup ones", without SDCARD, provided you make some steps wich i can't remember now, Wii don't relies too much on SD card, it's needed to have one, of course, but your wii won't die if, for some reason, you can't use one.

 

[TheCyberQuake]

Hey, guys, sorry for ressurect this thread, and sorry for my bad english.

i've been reading this thread, and i'll try explain my current situation, and you ppl will see any sense on kill SD need, OR, at least try to help me with some way to use SD to just boot O3DS.

That's the point. I'm playing Fire Emblem, played Awakening, and playing now, "Fates edition". The main problem on this, is the fact i'm havin SD read failures during gameplay, and i need to have some persistence to make it read the SDcard again.

Not sure why this happens, but the fact is: 3DS seem to make constant SD reading, no matter what you're doing, and i hardly have ways to know if it's a defective MicroSD Card, or if it is a defective SD slot..

The point here is about not killing totally SD dependency, it's about to make it "less needed". that's the point. there is no way to make it do boot check only, and to make games and saves going to internal 3DS storage?

As far i understand it, any softmod relies constantly on SD read and writing, and on arm9loader case, i just need a way to install games on true sysnand and for the saves, at least to make SD reading and writing just when it's needed (just when you're saving and loading only).

I think that's the main problem here, it's not really a mess if you can't boot with no SD card, it's nothing too destructive, provided you did backups, it's ridiculously easy to make backups nowadays, oh god, i'm not surprised if i had payload and full hack backups on mars cloudsaving or interdimensional backup services, the problem is to make constant reading from those SD cards, and my problem can happen with anyone, because SD failures is not a rare thing.

And when it comes to Wii, if memory serves me well, it was still possible to play your games, even the "backup ones", without SDCARD, provided you make some steps wich i can't remember now, Wii don't relies too much on SD card, it's needed to have one, of course, but your wii won't die if, for some reason, you can't use one.

From what I understand using A9LH and CFW sysNAND does lower how often the console will read and write to the SD compared to doing an emuNAND. Along with that, a version of A9LH does now exist which allows you to boot without SD card:
http://gbatemp.net/threads/a9lh-can-now-boot-without-sd-card.432593
The best way to tell if your card is defective or the slot is to simply buy a new SD card. If your issues stop after using a new SD card then the card is faulty, not the slot.

 

[perspex]

This.... This thread has been enlightening for me. I also find the whole 3ds becoming a potato for not having something as simple as a SD card inside it really grinds my gears. I mean think about it, if something goes wrong with the SD, you gotta restore that shit.... For that you gotta keep backing up that shit on a weekly basis. If you wanna sell it, you have to go through a lot of work again whereas with the menuhax... You can just remove the SD card, get a new one and be done with it. Official 9.2 console with no hiccups!

Can someone pls explain how much faster and better using the a9lh is compared to menuhax... Cos i have an o3ds with menuhax +Luma and it boots pretty fast including the damn bootmanager. Yeah, it gets stuck on the yellow screen once in a while, but a simple restart fixes the problem. I can do pretty much all the stuff an a9lh guy can do, update the emunand,pirate shit, install homebrew, play pirated shit online and have a ready hackable fw sysnand good to go whenever required.

The whole 2.1.0 downgrade and installing arm9... Seems like a lot of work and extra risk to make your console into a SD dependent potato that just boots faster( how much faster is it exactly?im not sure) and boots 100% of the time. These two are the only benefits I see above menuhax.

I have a freaking brand new 3ds xl lying around for an entire day cos I can't figure out which hax to install on it. I sound like a menuhax fanboy... But I'm still confused!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[TheCyberQuake]

This.... This thread has been enlightening for me. I also find the whole 3ds becoming a potato for not having something as simple as a SD card inside it really grinds my gears. I mean think about it, if something goes wrong with the SD, you gotta restore that shit.... For that you gotta keep backing up that shit on a weekly basis. If you wanna sell it, you have to go through a lot of work again whereas with the menuhax... You can just remove the SD card, get a new one and be done with it. Official 9.2 console with no hiccups!

Can someone pls explain how much faster and better using the a9lh is compared to menuhax... Cos i have an o3ds with menuhax +Luma and it boots pretty fast including the damn bootmanager. Yeah, it gets stuck on the yellow screen once in a while, but a simple restart fixes the problem. I can do pretty much all the stuff an a9lh guy can do, update the emunand,pirate shit, install homebrew, play pirated shit online and have a ready hackable fw sysnand good to go whenever required.

The whole 2.1.0 downgrade and installing arm9... Seems like a lot of work and extra risk to make your console into a SD dependent potato that just boots faster( how much faster is it exactly?im not sure) and boots 100% of the time. These two are the only benefits I see above menuhax.

I have a freaking brand new 3ds xl lying around for an entire day cos I can't figure out which hax to install on it. I sound like a menuhax fanboy... But I'm still confused!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Literally one post above yours I just stated a newer version of A9LH exists that allows it to boot without SD.
Also removing A9LH isn't much harder than removing menuhax and emuNAND. All you have to do is either restore a backup of your NAND before you installed A9LH, or much easier would be to run safeA9LHinstaller again and run the uninstall option. It can actually take less time to remove A9LH than removing emuNAND + menuhax.
Along with that, installing A9LH is extremely safe, and any bricks that have happened in the last 4 months have all been user error. I will admit it does take a lot of time to install, but it does give more benefits along with the two you mentioned in your post
1. FIRM write protection, meaning most updates should be fine to install, unless Ninty finds a way to botch that or CFW is not compatible with a new firmware. I've heard from a few devs that if they found a way to bypass A9LH FIRM protection, they would be able to kill not only A9LH but also any and all CFW anyway, meaning even menuhax + CFW would be dead
2. having arm9 kernel exploits run on the latest firmware sysNAND. The main worry about updating the firmware on emuNAND is accidentally updating sysNAND and causing your console to no longer be exploitable (at least not as easily and possibly not immediately). With A9LH you don't really have to worry about updating, because absolute worst case something doesn't work and you can just restore a backup. If you accidentally update sysNAND while using menuhax, you potentially lose menuhax and exploits to be able to even restore a backup.
3. Being able to run programs at boot time, which while some of these could be ran via menuhax, others like custom boot animations require A9LH. Not everyone needs this, but it is another pro for some people.
4. Brick protection. A9LH can boot payloads before the home menu loads, allowing you to have brick protection. As long as you have backups, you can always restore if you manage to somehow screw something up. Yes emuNAND is a form of brick protection, but you will have to also mess with sysNAND if you want to run DSiWare and certain (maybe all?) VC titles from emuNAND. You must install these titles to both NANDs in order to get them to run from emuNAND. If anything goes wrong while installing a title to your sysNAND and it causes a brick, you will have to hardmod if you are running menuhax instead of A9LH.

It also boots only milliseconds slower than loading stock sysNAND (at most I would say .5 seconds, and even that is too much to me). The whole process has now been well refined and is extremely safe. All of the 3ds software used is basically idiot proof, and as long as you don't try to bypass their safety features the worst that will happen would be either frankenfirmware (which is completely fixable and happens to people who are just downgrading to 9.2 for menuhax) or just failure to complete the process, which you could just switch over to menuhax if you simply can't get it to work for some reason.
Plailect's guide literally holds your hand through the entire process, describing everything in extreme detail

 

[perspex]

and the confusion continues....I don't think i'll ever be able to decide. Everyone has some or other goddamn good valid points that messes up my judgement.

The main worry about updating the firmware on emuNAND is accidentally updating sysNAND and causing your console to no longer be exploitable (at least not as easily and possibly not immediately).

Okay tell me something, I have a permanent emunand+luma3ds cold boot set up with ctrbootmanager on my o3ds. Im using type 2 menuhax, so it boots into 11.0 emunand everytime unless i hold L during boot, then it boots into 9.2 sysnand.

With this setup, is it possible to still accidentally update the sysnand? like does somehow updating the emunand sometimes install it over the sysnand or something? Just trying to clear out all my doubts before i decide on the a9lh for my n3dsxl, sorry if i'm annoying in anyway.

 

[TheCyberQuake]

and the confusion continues....I don't think i'll ever be able to decide. Everyone has some or other goddamn good valid points that messes up my judgement.



Okay tell me something, I have a permanent emunand+luma3ds cold boot set up with ctrbootmanager on my o3ds. Im using type 2 menuhax, so it boots into 11.0 emunand everytime unless i hold L during boot, then it boots into 9.2 sysnand.

With this setup, is it possible to still accidentally update the sysnand? like does somehow updating the emunand sometimes install it over the sysnand or something? Just trying to clear out all my doubts before i decide on the a9lh for my n3dsxl, sorry if i'm annoying in anyway.

Yes, even while inside of emuNAND it is possible to accidentally update sysNAND. If you do update emuNAND you are supposed to do it from within system settings. If you get the popup update nag on the home menu and click yes to install it, it is very likely (not sure if 100%?) that it will update sysNAND instead. You also have to make sure when you are in system settings that you are actually in emuNAND still before updating. And even then there are a few reports of people making sure they were in emuNAND, but sysNAND was updated anyways, though those are not fully verified and should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[OrGoN3]

If you went A9LH route and kept your same emunand 11/sysnand 9.2 setup, if sysnand ever accidentally got upgraded, you could downgrade it back from a previously dumped image.

 

[GilgameshArcher]

Drecrypt9 and GODMODE9 at boot is enough reason for oneself.

 

[Amapola62]

Booting 100% and in 10 seconds...

 

[magusss]

From what I understand using A9LH and CFW sysNAND does lower how often the console will read and write to the SD compared to doing an emuNAND. Along with that, a version of A9LH does now exist which allows you to boot without SD card:
http://gbatemp.net/threads/a9lh-can-now-boot-without-sd-card.432593
The best way to tell if your card is defective or the slot is to simply buy a new SD card. If your issues stop after using a new SD card then the card is faulty, not the slot.

Yeah, i'm suspecting about my SD, it's a micro SD one, i'll try a new SD CLASS10 and see if it solves my great pain here. The no SD thing is a great update uh? No SD boot is always welcome.

 

[Roboman]

and the confusion continues....I don't think i'll ever be able to decide. Everyone has some or other goddamn good valid points that messes up my judgement.



Okay tell me something, I have a permanent emunand+luma3ds cold boot set up with ctrbootmanager on my o3ds. Im using type 2 menuhax, so it boots into 11.0 emunand everytime unless i hold L during boot, then it boots into 9.2 sysnand.

With this setup, is it possible to still accidentally update the sysnand? like does somehow updating the emunand sometimes install it over the sysnand or something? Just trying to clear out all my doubts before i decide on the a9lh for my n3dsxl, sorry if i'm annoying in anyway.

Card updates update sysnand (I'm pretty sure)
Going into microsd card management and back to system settings reboots you to sysnand system settings. Home menu does not load so Menuhax won't protect you in this circumstance.
As long as you update from system settings while it says emu- you are fine.