Hacking Updated A9LH but still cant boot without SD?

[Chrushev]

I have an Old 3DS and I updated A9LH on it using https://3ds.guide/updating-a9lh guide.

I normally boot into an emunand. But from what I understand it should still work? When I take out the SD card the blue light turns on for like a second then goes off. With SD Card in it should still boot right?

Edit: for anyone that stumbles upon this in the future. You have to do the CTRNAND portion from Sysnand not from Enunand.

 

[Quantumcat]

You need to follow the steps in installing a9lh where you copy arm9loaderhax.bin to CTR NAND using FBI.

 

[Chrushev]

You need to follow the steps in installing a9lh where you copy arm9loaderhax.bin to CTR NAND using FBI.

I did, but I used FBI within Emunand, so I guess I need to inject it and run it in Sysnand?

 

[Quantumcat]

I did, but I used FBI within Emunand, so I guess I need to inject it and run it in Sysnand?

Doing it on emuNAND will do nothing. EmuNAND is stored on your SD card (so can't do anything if the SD card is not inserted) and is not loaded until after a9lh is loaded (so nothing in emuNAND can help you with a9lh loading).

EmuNAND use is discouraged for good reason. It leads to confusion and extra work and doesn't have any benefit at all.

 

[Chrushev]

Doing it on emuNAND will do nothing. EmuNAND is stored on your SD card (so can't do anything if the SD card is not inserted) and is not loaded until after a9lh is loaded (so nothing in emuNAND can help you with a9lh loading).

EmuNAND use is discouraged for good reason. It leads to confusion and extra work and doesn't have any benefit at all.

There are actually zero reasons to go to Sysnand if you already have Emunand, and more than 1 reason to stay on Emunand. For instance 2 reasons to stay on emunand:

1) You will always have a 9.2 console no matter what no matter how many updates.
2) 11.3 messed up a lot of CFW's and at least a couple of people either lost their hack or bricked their 3DS by futsing around with Gateway and updating... if that happened on Emunand I could just restore, but wiht Sysnand those people are stuck in best case with non hackable 3DS or in worst a brick for Trump's wall.

Not having to install things to Sysnand/Emunand with just having Sysnand like in my case A9LH is not a good case for switching away from Emunand, its literally a few extra seconds, the only reason I was confused is because I thought FBI would write to Sysnand like Decrypt9WIP does, but I guess it makes sense that you are doing it from within Emunand so its isolated.

If there were literally zero reasons to stay on Emunand I would still stay there because of the fact that I like having 9.2 console no matter what.

 

[Aglaophotis]

You will always have a 9.2 console no matter what no matter how many updates.

I like having 9.2 console no matter what.

What is the benefit of having 9.2 over 11.2 or 11.3 with A9LH? (excluding the HBL issue on 11.3)
I'm not asking in a challenging way - I'm just curious, because I'm still rather new to this stuff and it's exciting to learn all those things.

 

[nechigawara]

Did you know that 11.2 is new 9.2?

 

[Chrushev]

Did you know that 11.2 is new 9.2?

What is the benefit of having 9.2 over 11.2 or 11.3 with A9LH? (excluding the HBL issue on 11.3)
I'm not asking in a challenging way - I'm just curious, because I'm still rather new to this stuff and it's exciting to learn all those things.

Because older firmware is always more vulnerable than the new. Thats just how software works. If something happens where all 3DSs are all of a sudden unhacked (this is just a hypothetical) you are better off being on a 9.2 than 11.2... realistically speaking, there is absolutely zero reason to be on 11.2 if you can be on a more vulnerable 9.2.

 

[nechigawara]

Up to you then. Since you speak like 9.2 is very superior why I only saw the advantage is auto boot menuhax.
Both of them have arm9 exploit + free arm11 userland exploit, so no different in my eyes.

 

[Aglaophotis]

If something happens where all 3DSs are all of a sudden unhacked (this is just a hypothetical) you are better off being on a 9.2 than 11.2... realistically speaking, there is absolutely zero reason to be on 11.2 if you can be on a more vulnerable 9.2.

Isn't there some FIRM write-protection when using A9LH + Luma? How can it be "unhacked"?
I also heard some online features won't work on older firmware.

 

[Quantumcat]

1) You will always have a 9.2 console no matter what no matter how many updates.

9.2 is not special anymore. 11.2 has the exact same access possible. And with a9lh, all firmwares have the same access. There's actually no reason to keep sysNAND on any particular firmware. When the 9.2 access was discovered, people were also very suspicious and didn't want to update from 4.5 either. But they eventually got over their unnecessary fears, same as you will.

2) 11.3 messed up a lot of CFW's and at least a couple of people either lost their hack or bricked their 3DS by futsing around with Gateway and updating... if that happened on Emunand I could just restore, but wiht Sysnand those people are stuck in best case with non hackable 3DS or in worst a brick for Trump's wall.

What? To restore either emuNAND or sysNAND, you will use the exact same steps/app and there is zero benefit to using an emuNAND. You would restore it identically to how you would restore sysNAND. There is zero benefit to having emuNAND here. There is absolutely no case where if something happens, having an emuNAND would have meant you could recover and having sysNAND-only means you couldn't.

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What is the benefit of having 9.2 over 11.2 or 11.3 with A9LH? (excluding the HBL issue on 11.3)
I'm not asking in a challenging way - I'm just curious, because I'm still rather new to this stuff and it's exciting to learn all those things.

There isn't. He's just uninformed and superstitious.

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@Chrushev you know you could just keep a backup of 9.2, and if something was released down the track that required 9.2, you could just restore that backup and try it. There's no need to keep your sysNAND on 9.2 right now while there's no benefit.

So, you should do this :
1. Make a backup of your sysNAND as it is now, on 9.2
2. Follow the "Move emuNAND" section of the guide
3. Live your life merrily
4. If something is released later, make an emuNAND (which will copy over your data etc) then restore the backup to your sysNAND
5. Now you can use the new thing that was released for 9.2

Or if you lose your backup you can do the same thing but replace step 4 with downgrade your sysNAND with sysupdater.

 

[Chrushev]

What? To restore either emuNAND or sysNAND, you will use the exact same steps/app and there is zero benefit to using an emuNAND. You would restore it identically to how you would restore sysNAND. There is zero benefit to having emuNAND here. There is absolutely no case where if something happens, having an emuNAND would have meant you could recover and having sysNAND-only means you couldn't.

If you do something silly on Emunand you will fuck up your Emunand.. if you do something silly on Systemnand you can make it unrecoverable. Yes recovery steps are the same assuming its recoverable.

 

[nechigawara]

If you do something silly on Emunand you will fuck up your Emunand.. if you do something silly on Systemnand you can make it unrecoverable. Yes recovery steps are the same assuming its recoverable.

If you follow the bible, they will always telling you to keep that NAND backup even after you finish the installing.
So, you will have that save point for sure if you're not deleting it.
And if the users were smart enough, they will create NAND backup before doing somethings risky.

Well, if you want to keep emuNAND, it's up to you. Nobody force you because it's your console.

 

[Chrushev]

If you follow the bible, they will always telling you to keep that NAND backup even after you finish the installing.
So, you will have that save point for sure if you're not deleting it.
And if the users were smart enough, they will create NAND backup before doing somethings risky.

Well, if you want to keep emuNAND, it's up to you. Nobody force you because it's your console.

Yeah and I want to just be clear that I am not trying to argue or prove my point. Ive been cracking/hacking sw/hw since the 90's and its always been best practice to stay on as old FW as you can. Once there is something that 11.2 allows me to do that 9.2 doesnt then Ill upgrade. And thats totally possible if 11.2 is as good and all new development is done for 11.2. Until then though I see no reason to upgrade. Ive enetered my sysnand for the first time in over a year just today to update a9lh CTRNAND through FBI. I was there for maybe 30 seonds and probably wont go back in there for another year. From user perspective its basically like having SysNand. And this is pure speculation but since I am using EmuNand for writing its all on the SD card which is easily replacable, but if my 3DS does become a relic of the past it will be nice to have a Sysnand that has never been written to really.

 

[nechigawara]

Yeah and I want to just be clear that I am not trying to argue or prove my point. Ive been cracking/hacking sw/hw since the 90's and its always been best practice to stay on as old FW as you can. Once there is something that 11.2 allows me to do that 9.2 doesnt then Ill upgrade. And thats totally possible if 11.2 is as good and all new development is done for 11.2. Until then though I see no reason to upgrade. Ive enetered my sysnand for the first time in over a year just today to update a9lh CTRNAND through FBI. I was there for maybe 30 seonds and probably wont go back in there for another year. From user perspective its basically like having SysNand. And this is pure speculation but since I am using EmuNand for writing its all on the SD card which is easily replacable, but if my 3DS does become a relic of the past it will be nice to have a Sysnand that has never been written to really.

Did you know that 3DS read & write NAND every time when it's boot, both EmuNAND and SysNAND?

 

[Quantumcat]

If you do something silly on Emunand you will fuck up your Emunand.. if you do something silly on Systemnand you can make it unrecoverable. Yes recovery steps are the same assuming its recoverable.

Um no. You use Hourglass9 to restore either your emuNAND or your sysNAND. If you do something to brick either one, you can restore it in the exact same way. A9LH runs before the home menu starts. It doesn't matter whether the home menu is run from sysNAND or emuNAND. Both equally recoverable. You need to do research to understand exactly what a9lh actually is.

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ve been cracking/hacking sw/hw since the 90's and its always been best practice to stay on as old FW as you can.

I very much doubt it. If you were using your 3DS in 2012-2014 with your attitude you would probably still be on 4.5.

If you do something against the norm, it may cause you compatibility issues down the line, and nobody is going to be able to help you troubleshoot because your set up is completely different to everyone else's and they won't be able to imagine what the problem is. You'll be completely on your own. Maybe it works fine now, but it might not later (granted that's a small risk today, given that 3DS will be EOL in the foreseeable future).

 

[nechigawara]

(granted that's a small risk today, given that 3DS will be EOL in the foreseeable future).

What's EOL shortend for?

 

[Jayro]

What's EOL shortend for?

End Of Life

 

[nechigawara]

End Of Life

Thanks, never see this word before.

 

[Jayro]

Thanks, never see this word before.

Yeah, it means it will be unsupported. Like, the Wii U has officially hit it's "End Of Life" last month.

Does anyone else find it off that the original Wii got it's YouTube channel, as a final send-off gift from Nintendo? It confuses me why they waited until the console was dead and buried to get it an official YouTube app.