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If you expecting some epic mods in this page then you will be disappointed but I'll rather write about the circumstances I went through to purchase my unit.
Sometime in 2017 (I guess) the one big online tech (and IT) news site on the German Internet *heise* published an article about Nintendo discontinuing the original 3DS model.
After reading that, I knew the same will happen to the newer 3DS models but I had no big urge yet to buy the New 3DS XL, so I'll thought of expecting another article from them about the other models but that didn't happen.
It was just some day in 2019 that I've had the random idea to lookup when Nintendo was going to stop selling N3DS XL in Europe, and I was like 6 months too late.
Importing the still produced Japanese model was out of the question due to fear of running into region/language problems. So, I watched eBay for many months for a reasonably priced unit that was preferably in a plain color (and not some fancy design edition that could fetch a high collectors price).
And one day I was in luck. A buy-it-now listing just appeared for a rather decent price of 129EUR
which was very close to the last retail price and it was in mint condition like new and CIB.
And sure enough, that thing wasn't really used at all. Not even a scratch on the display.
That was excellent, so I've bought hi-quality screen-protectors with a matte finish (just like I did with my DS Lite, back then in 2008).
Which went a little bit south as the protector for the top screen was missing but the seller quickly mailed me the replacement.
Even the firmware was very outdated, so much that soundhax was used to hack this. Thankfully that didn't meant that LCD's were TN, as homebrew told me that both screens were IPS, not that I care much about that but it's awesome that I've gotten this for that price.
Another oddity is that the serial number doesn't match the box, but matches what is shown in *3DSident*. My reason to get this variant is mainly because bigger screen size and the volume slider (all other 3DS have volume buttons). The homebrew shown on the first picture is *FourthTube*. |
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If there's something I really dislike about this system then it's the thin compact size being rather uncomfortable for my (adult-sized) hands. So this clip-on contraption fixes that but that lightweight plastic alone isn't enough.
The entire thing's too light (for my taste, I simply love the DMG-001 for the thick, solid feeling case it provides), so I glued two heavy bolts on the inner side in true "Chinese-fake" fashion. Now it feels so much better to hold with this extra weight.
Also the kickstand makes for a neat door to the SD card. So square hole was cut and a thin MicroSD extension was installed, the length of that is just right for this purpose.
Previously, I've tried a silicone cover to hold that SD card extender against the bottom and be able pull that out with a glued on pull-tab through the hole for the charging port but that wasn't really so useful after all.
That's why I kept the upper part on and cut lower half away.
The easy access to the 128GB card makes it pretty simple to install games, I use the Python based *custom-install* to install CIA files onto the system.
And running that program under WinXP is not so simple unless you've got Python 3.8 up and running (which is very tricky but not impossible).
