It has recently been found out that the Gateway team put code into their Beta 2 (clones: 3.2-3.3b) that purposely bricks 3DSs when the checksum of the launcher.dat fails.

That means even when using a real gateway card the code can trigger when the launcher.dat is corrupted in any way.

The code is written to trigger at a random point in time which is based on the time the file was copied onto the SD.

When the brick code triggers it bricks the firmware and reprograms the eMMC NAND to have a size of 0 bytes.

edit:
Normmatt's region free patch is not safe either!

source:
https://ngb.to/threads/161-Gateway-3DS-Erste-funktionierende-3DS-Flashcart?p=187387#post187387

 

serious gateway is just killing the other sides??? **** you gateway

but at the other hand, r4i needs to do real work now

 

People need to start emailing Gateway demanding they stop bricking 3DS consoles for using modified launchers. I would understand if they wanted to brick the red gateway flashcart so it can't be used on modified launchers, but bricking a 3DS console is going too far. Nintendo has never intentionally bricked a console for having a modified firmware or flashcart, so customers should not have to expect that from Gateway. Plus Gateway never directly notified customers that they coded this in to happen. People should STOP buying the Gateway until they stop doing this. Vote with your wallet!

 

Moved my post from the second page to here, so more people can see it.
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Just read though the entire german thread (translated) and this is what I got out of it.

• Gateway 3ds Clones will have their system NAND corrupted and the system NAND reader corrupted - no easy fix, if any at all.
• Gateway 3ds users with SD corruption issues can get this brick.
  EDIT 2: Apparently, GW has a sanity check to check for corruption. You should be safe with an unmodified GW launcher.
• The Region-Free patch for the Gateway 2.0b2 firmware does not have this bricking issue. EDIT: Apparently, it does.

Recommended Actions:

• Don't use the Region-Free patch - It will brick your system
• Don't use R4i 3ds Gold Deluxe or 3DS Link or Orange 3DS on any firmware equivilent to 2.0b2!
• If you are using Gateway, make sure not to download your launcher file from an external source!

If you are using a Gateway, and afraid you have a bad launcher.dat, you can perform a checksum.

As for actually performing the checksum...

http://gbatemp.net/threads/brick-protect-3ds-for-gw2-02b-users.360580/#post-4884288

Foxi4 was so kind as to write a program that will do it for you. Simply put your launcher.dat and his program into your NDS flash cartridge, and run it.

Note that this is almost arbitrary at this point. It is all but confirmed that GW users are completely safe... provided they are using unmodified files.


The rest of this thread is basically clarifying that NAND restore WILL NOT FIX THE BRICK and discussing the politics of the situation, with the occasional Noob telling everyone it is no big deal, and safe for GW users.


EDIT 2: As stated earlier, apparently there is a sanity check in place that will not run code from a corrupted file.

Source: https://twitter.com/Mathieulh

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Personally, I think that gateway had better remove this code, otherwise they are going to be scaring off all of their customers. It does rather throw a wrench into the clones of the Gateway though, as now they cannot copy Gateway's work. We just are unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of all this.

Here's to hoping that the Gateway devs will remove this malicious code in the 2.0 Release. If they don't we are going to start having the brilliant people in the community patch all the launchers, which is no fun.

 

Apache Thunder
Yeah but it's not Nintendo and they can do whatever they want. People won't stop buying the GW cards until a free piracy solution is available. It's sad , but true.

 

The hack for region free is already safe, and therefore safer than the official GW code? LOL​

​

Thanks for pointing that out, I really need the region free. ​

​

Edit: IT ISNT D:

 

So it's true. This is a dick move by the people behind Gateway. Bricking a clone card would be evil on its own, bricking a users system is inexcusable.

 

The idea is obviously to brick the consoles of other teams (who have stolen their exploit) to slow down their progress.

I mean it sounds like it bricks the 3DS in a really severe way so you can't fix by flashing a backup nand dump.

But this is so badly thought through that they will have to retract it - or they will surely suffer huge loss of admiration and customers

 

sorry bruh , but this is not a excuse for breaking a FRIGGIN console

They could have , dunno , corrupted your sd and then show a message , don't support the clones or whatever , but breaking consoles is beyond legal terms I think

 

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!!?!?
BRICKING CONSOLES?
**** u gateway!
come on!you say who made that launcher.dat cant figure out how to block the cards instead of bricking consoles?
that would be ok if they broke clone cards but by bricking consoles they just showed us how greedy they are and they even dont care about their own customers!