Unbricking without a NAND Backup

[skawo]

Recently I got this batch of DS parts and in it was a 3DS board. I had some spare 3DS shells and stuff, so I rigged everything together into one semi-complete unit.
Sadly, the 3DS doesn't boot - blue light turns on and stays that way forever.

After discovering that the cartridge port was effed and swapping it with another from a parts board, I managed to boot into Godmode9 with NTRBoot and can do stuff there.

I have tried unplugging the Camera ribbon and swapping the Wifi board with a known working one.
The in-built 3DS recovery menu does not start.
I attempted a CTRTransfer and Lazarus3DS, neither of which made a difference.
Trying to launch Luma CFW leaves a log on the SD card, reporting a crash with title ID 0004013000002202.

The 3DS came with an SD card with this on it:

Is there anything else that can be done, or is this definitely just toast?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

WiFi shouldn't be the problem. No chance to even ntrboot with bad/missing WiFi.
Camera makes trouble on "New" series consoles only.

Title list
https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Title_list#00040130_-_System_Modules
delivers PTM Services for the ID.

Just to be sure: You are not using the old SD which might contain EmuNAND?
Install B9S if not already done (doing ntrboot get tedious), put Luma on CTRNAND and try without SD.
===========


Thanks to the poor (none!) hardware error reporting on the 3DS family it is hard to impossible to pinpoint issues.


Software side there is not much to try. CTRTransfer Type D9, Lazarus... that should have solved pretty much all software problems.

 

[skawo]

No, not using the emunand SD.
B9S fails to install on the last step.

Maybe the NAND is fried? But GM9 sha checks of system titles seem to pass.

 

[gomgo]

First of all, have you tryed to update Luma? If not, try to update the boot.firm with Luma-3GXLoader wich is a mod for making Luma Compatible with plugins and NTRBoot program (so maybe it could help), here is the link

Now, i'm not a 100% sure if this could help, but with NUS, you could try to redownload the "corrupt" title, but you have to download it for your 3DS System Version

Also, if i'm not wrong there's a way to install an *internet full system backup* with NTRBoot without needing an NAND copy

 

[skawo]

Per my understanding Lazarus already puts Luma on CTRNand?

 

[gomgo]

Per my understanding Lazarus already puts Luma on CTRNand?

try to update manually your CTRNand Luma by copying the Luma3DS file on your SD Card (try with the mod i said) and in GM9 you should have an option to install it to Nand on GM9Megascript

 

[skawo]

It occurred to me that I technically don't know which region this system is, and I believe you need to CTRTransfer into your proper region.

I do have a backup of the broken NAND, so I can restore it to its original state. Is there a way I can find out the proper region from Godmode9?


Updating Luma did not work, incidentally.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

It occurred to me that I technically don't know which region this system is, and I believe you need to CTRTransfer into your proper region.

CTRTransfer is also used for region changing.
Simple region change as well as invasive things like Lazarus will make a 3DS unable to boot without Luma3DS being loaded.

Maybe the NAND is fried? But GM9 sha checks of system titles seem to pass.

Did you try to install some firm file to FIRM0/FIRM1 with GodMode9.

CTRTransfer Type D9 script has a destructive (!) test for checking the NAND very much like h2testw for SDs.

 

[skawo]

Yeah, installing the B9S firm via Godmode succeeds, but it doesn't appear to load anything :/

I will run the CTRTransfer NAND checker, I guess.

Post automatically merged: Jun 24, 2023

TEST STARTS
DATE [YYMMDD]: 230624
TIME [HHMMSS]: 204329

S:/nand_minsize.bin
SHA-256: A5C971B79943F1AFDCD7ED0B35CC74555989EAB92F9B7687181E91D0C427384B

0:/gm9/out/nand_minsize.bin , backup: PASSED

0:/gm9/out/nand_minsize.bin
SHA-256: A5C971B79943F1AFDCD7ED0B35CC74555989EAB92F9B7687181E91D0C427384B

S:/nand_minsize.bin & 0:/gm9/out/nand_minsize.bin
hash match: PASSED

1st Write Test (00): PASSED
1st Hash Test (00): FAILED

3rd Write Test (restore): PASSED
3rd Hash Test (restore): PASSED

TEST ENDS
DATE [YYMMDD]: 230624
TIME [HHMMSS]: 211957

Damn, I guess it means the eMMC is fried. Sad.

 

[Meatball132]

Damn, I guess it means the eMMC is fried. Sad.

yep

 

[skawo]

Made an emunand from the broken NAND backup, ran CTRTransfer on it and now if I NTRBoot into Luma, it actually loads the system correctly.

I don't suppose you could flash the fixed NAND image to an SD card, cut the CLK line and solder in the SD to these points:?