gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

DS Flash Equipment > Possible to brick a DS Lite without SL1 jumped?

#121817 - JLsoft - Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:19 am

Basically what the title says...

I just got a DS Lite, and have a slot 2 SuperCard CF and am waiting on a slot 1 R4DS (which also works as a nopass)...

...I was only considering installing FlashMe on it because of the recovery code to recover from bricking programs/etc, but recently I've ran across several posts referencing that the Lite (and later normal DSes) need SL1 to be bridged in order to write over -any- of the stock firmware (other than user settings)



So can anyone totally confirm this? Is it impossible for a bricker program to kill the stock firmware on a DS Lite if SL1 isn't jumped? ...or did I misunderstand these other posts? :)

#121897 - Lynx - Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:17 pm

My understanding is that is correct. The new model DS (late phat and lites) uses a different firmware chip and has all the firmware protected except for the user settings.

But, what does that really mean? Unless you know for sure that you have the newer chip, you really don't know how much of your firmware is protected. I guess if you have a lite, you can "assume" you have protected firmware? That statement being that I don't really know their manufacturing environment, if all manufactureres are using the exact same components (which we found they change, like the LCD screens).
_________________
NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews

#152582 - folderol - Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:43 pm

Sorry for the necroposting, but my question is actually related to this topic, so I felt it didn't need a new thread.

My question: why isn't there like a testing program for this? Just reading a byte somewhere above the 64KB limit (below has always been protected by SL1) and then trying to write this back onto the same spot or something, so that even IF it's possible, no harm gets done. I suppose somebody would've written a program like this if it was possible to figure it out that easily.

But what are the odds for a recently (2008) bought lite with firmware v5 (pictochat test: magenta) to be still vurnerable actually?

#153506 - josath - Tue Apr 01, 2008 1:21 am

i dunno, sounds pretty risky to me, trying to brick your DS on purpose to see if it's possible? sure if you do it right, it will be ok, but just doesn't seem worth the possible failures to me.