Hacking Homebrew What does firm1 and firm0 actually do?

[EnergeticEnergy]

Im a bit of a noob, I would like to know what the purpose of these are individually, I can't seem to find anything elsewhere...

 

[ihaveahax]

Boot9 loads the firmware from a FIRM partition, usually NATIVE_FIRM on a stock console but boot9strap (or fastboot3DS) on a modified one. FIRM0 is the primary partition, FIRM1 is a backup in case the previous is corrupted.

 

[EnergeticEnergy]

Boot9 loads the firmware from a FIRM partition, usually NATIVE_FIRM on a stock console but boot9strap (or fastboot3DS) on a modified one. FIRM0 is the primary partition, FIRM1 is a backup in case the previous is corrupted.

Okay, I see... So what else can be installed on there? Is it just exclusive to native firm or a CFW?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Okay, I see... So what else can be installed on there? Is it just exclusive to native firm or a CFW?

Any .firm payload basically. In theory you could install Luma3DS directly into FIRM. Or GodMode9. But there's not much point to doing so as it would just make it harder to update.

 

[Takokeshi]

Personally I put fb3ds on firm0 and gm9 on firm1. Useful to always have it available regardless of SD card.

Update is easy, you just put the new firm on SD and flash to firm1 in fb3ds. You do need to enable dev mode though to flash ir boot anything to/from firm1.

 

[EnergeticEnergy]

Personally I put fb3ds on firm0 and gm9 on firm1. Useful to always have it available regardless of SD card.

Update is easy, you just put the new firm on SD and flash to firm1 in fb3ds. You do need to enable dev mode though to flash ir boot anything to/from firm1.

How can I switch from b9s to something else, also what would be the benefits?

 

[EnergeticEnergy]

Any .firm payload basically. In theory you could install Luma3DS directly into FIRM. Or GodMode9. But there's not much point to doing so as it would just make it harder to update.

I gotchu, so I don't know if you have heard of BAX (BootAnim10) but basically it is a firm which loads a video and then boots whatever you are attempting to start up. Would this be possible to put in FIRM so that I could boot it first before luma or is there a better way of going about this, I basically am just trying to change my boot path but I'm not sure how to do this.

 

[Takokeshi]

How can I switch from b9s to something else, also what would be the benefits?

You just flash a different firm to firm0 instead of b9s. You can do that with gm9, or with open firm installer.

The benefits of fb3ds is that you can have more granular control over your boot options, for instance by default mine boots cfw when no buttons held, if I hold R it boots gm9. You can assign different button combinations for each payload to load them directly, instead of having to select them in a menu like you would have to do with luma chainloader. Some payloads have trouble working properly when you chainload them through luma as well, I believe that may have been resolved in recent months though.

You can do nand backups/restores directly from within it, as well, so if that was the only thing you used gm9 for, you can get rid of it and just have fb3ds for everything.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I gotchu, so I don't know if you have heard of BAX (BootAnim10) but basically it is a firm which loads a video and then boots whatever you are attempting to start up. Would this be possible to put in FIRM so that I could boot it first before luma or is there a better way of going about this, I basically am just trying to change my boot path but I'm not sure how to do this.

If you put it as boot.firm, it already loads before Luma anyway, and Luma is loaded from SD:\bax\boot.firm

 

[EnergeticEnergy]

You just flash a different firm to firm0 instead of b9s. You can do that with gm9, or with open firm installer.

The benefits of fb3ds is that you can have more granular control over your boot options, for instance by default mine boots cfw when no buttons held, if I hold R it boots gm9. You can assign different button combinations for each payload to load them directly, instead of having to select them in a menu like you would have to do with luma chainloader. Some payloads have trouble working properly when you chainload them through luma as well, I believe that may have been resolved in recent months though.

You can do nand backups/restores directly from within it, as well, so if that was the only thing you used gm9 for, you can get rid of it and just have fb3ds for everything.

ohhh ok thanks!

 

[EnergeticEnergy]

If you put it as boot.firm, it already loads before Luma anyway, and Luma is loaded from SD:\bax\boot.firm

Well, yes... But if you have an app like CTGP-7 which has to read the boot.firm to load plugins, it is conflicted with the fact that whatever you renamed to boot.firm, isn't actually luma and it will delete and replace it with the actual luma with the plugin installed.

 

[lone_wolf323]

Well, yes... But if you have an app like CTGP-7 which has to read the boot.firm to load plugins, it is conflicted with the fact that whatever you renamed to boot.firm, isn't actually luma and it will delete and replace it with the actual luma with the plugin installed.

Ive yet to see any program that ISNT malicious to actually replace the boot.firm without YOUR consent or doing.

 

[EnergeticEnergy]

Ive yet to see any program that ISNT malicious to actually replace the boot.firm without YOUR consent or doing.

CTGP-7 does, it requires the plugin so it can load the mod, and yes. You do have to consent to it. Whenever I had BAX named to boot.firm, it replaced it with luma and therefore BAX couldn't start (obviously though).