Hacking Been inactive in 3DS Scene for a while, got some questions.

[Godson777]

Heyo, long time member, long time being inactive as well lmao

So uh, I haven't touched my 3DS in a long time, at least a year, maybe more. A friend of mine started talking about 3DS stuff and I got motivated to get back into messing around with my 3DS and playing some games I missed during my downtime.

I'm still stuck with a Gateway 3DS with menuhax, and I'm fully aware it's not officially getting updates, not surprised either. That leaves me in a strange place where I can't update emuNAND because gateway, and I'm seeing all kinds of new stuff in the homebrew scene. Because of this, I have a few questions for everyone who's still active in the scene:

1. Should I just ditch Gateway? I very much enjoy running my backups straight from the gateway card instead of installing a bunch of CIAs, but at this point I might as well make that sacrifice if I must.
2. If I were to ditch Gateway, which CFW are still active? There were a handful of CFWs back when I used to be active, I think one was called CFR? I remember Luma3DS, but I've no clue what's still being worked on.
3. Are the ban waves still a thing? I panicked when the first wave came around and I winded up barely touching my 3DS during that period, and then I completely forgot about it after a while. (Thus me being here now)

Honestly I have more questions regarding all the new homebrew and stuff, but I'm sure I can just look around and find out what I missed out on myself.

Thanks in advance guys, means a lot.

 

[SANIC]

Heyo, long time member, long time being inactive as well lmao

So uh, I haven't touched my 3DS in a long time, at least a year, maybe more. A friend of mine started talking about 3DS stuff and I got motivated to get back into messing around with my 3DS and playing some games I missed during my downtime.

I'm still stuck with a Gateway 3DS with menuhax, and I'm fully aware it's not officially getting updates, not surprised either. That leaves me in a strange place where I can't update emuNAND because gateway, and I'm seeing all kinds of new stuff in the homebrew scene. Because of this, I have a few questions for everyone who's still active in the scene:

1. Should I just ditch Gateway? I very much enjoy running my backups straight from the gateway card instead of installing a bunch of CIAs, but at this point I might as well make that sacrifice if I must.
2. If I were to ditch Gateway, which CFW are still active? There were a handful of CFWs back when I used to be active, I think one was called CFR? I remember Luma3DS, but I've no clue what's still being worked on.
3. Are the ban waves still a thing? I panicked when the first wave came around and I winded up barely touching my 3DS during that period, and then I completely forgot about it after a while. (Thus me being here now)

Honestly I have more questions regarding all the new homebrew and stuff, but I'm sure I can just look around and find out what I missed out on myself.

Thanks in advance guys, means a lot.

1. Yes
2.Luma3DS is noob friendly and imo the best end user cfw.
3. Ban waves are not a thing, but there is a very low chance of being randomly banned if lots of stuff is uncautiously done.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

1. Installing CIAs these days is kind of a hassle now that FreeShop etc. don't work anymore. But anyway it's not much more effort than downloading games in .3DS format, it just takes longer. The main thing you're losing out on with GW is online, since you can't update. The process of migrating everything over to CIAs is kind of a hassle but it's worth it if you still use the 3DS on a regular basis, so I would say go for it.
2. Luma3DS is the most popular, there are others though like ReiSix.
3. Not really.

 

[CrispyCola]

I've been away from the 3DS scene as well (since dec 2017), my 3DS has been sitting on a shelf until yesterday
1. Yes, but if you REALLY like being able to run from .3ds and you have $80 lying around, get a stargate
2. Luma3DS is great, ReiSix is a great option as well. As for a CFW Entrypoint menuhax is long dead, you can use Boot9strap or fastboot3ds. A tutorial for B9S is here http://3ds.hacks.guide
3. Ehhhh... no

 

[bungboi]

1. Yes, but if you REALLY like being able to run from .3ds and you have $80 lying around, get a stargate

All it takes is 2 button presses in GodMode9 to get 3ds files to CIA; I don't see any reason to have a Stargate atm, especially when Frogminer is out.

 

[Godson777]

Okay, so everyone's saying to switch to Luma3DS.

This is gonna sound like a noob question, but how would I go about switching from Gateway emuNAND to Luma3DS? From what I'm seeing, Luma3DS is a sysNAND based CFW? Or did I misunderstand that? I'd prefer having an emuNAND in case I screw something up in typical "me" fashion, unless there's other alternatives of backing up similar to emuNAND? I'm not exactly sure what's the state of 3DS modding, and I'm still trying to catch up, figured I'd be better off asking instead of searching around endlessly haha

 

[CrispyCola]

Okay, so everyone's saying to switch to Luma3DS.

This is gonna sound like a noob question, but how would I go about switching from Gateway emuNAND to Luma3DS? From what I'm seeing, Luma3DS is a sysNAND based CFW? Or did I misunderstand that? I'd prefer having an emuNAND in case I screw something up in typical "me" fashion, unless there's other alternatives of backing up similar to emuNAND? I'm not exactly sure what's the state of 3DS modding, and I'm still trying to catch up, figured I'd be better off asking instead of searching around endlessly haha

Follow http://3ds.hacks.guide it has a section called Move emuNAND.

Boot9Strap gives us bootrom code execution (we broke the highest level of security), and emuNAND is completely unnecessary at this point in the scene. Luma3DS can still use emuNAND if you want, however. An ntrboot card is now what (at least I) use as brick protection. It can recover from any kind of brick (except MCU), even if the NAND chip has been fried or removed from the motherboard.

edit: Also on the guide's front page

• If you have already hacked your 3DS before to get an EmuNAND setup, and would like to move the contents of your previous EmuNAND to your new SysNAND CFW, you should follow all instructions and restore your existing EmuNAND when prompted once you reach Finalizing Setup