Hey everyone,
I was so close.. I got an old 3DS with low firmware, got the right copy of smash and upgraded to 9.2.0-12u just fine and was so excited to start hacking like crazy but no go. It looks like my browser is at 1.7552 and there's no way to update it without also updating the firmware. I've heard a lot of other people have also had this issue. If anyone has a solution it would be amazing, I would really love to start playing around with all these tools.
Otherwise I thought I would put out an SOS. If I upload a powersave of my town would someone be willing to run the rockbreaker, grass seeder, and unlock all PWP's on my town and send it back? I cannot express how much I would appreciate it. All I can offer in exchange are some original villagers that I've saved in boxes on powersave (Chief, Whitney, Lolly, Fang, Gladys), and an offer to use powersave to help get any items you may need. I've spent so much time trying to get all my favorite villagers and powersaving for DLC items, this is the last thing I need to do, I'm so pissed that after all that effort my browser is screwing me over.
Thanks so much to this community for coming up with all these tools, I really hope a new exploit will let me use them someday! >w<
(I might suggest that the OP's post be edited to mention that certain browser versions don't work for this exploit to work and that using Smash or another game to upgrade your firmware will NOT upgrade you browser. Don't want anyone else to get stuck like I did.)