DS's Bricked?

[Moosegrinder]

We just had a woman in at work asking to help see if her Mario 64 DS cart was broken or if it was her DS acting up. So I use a pre0owned one to test it and it wouldn't power up. A bit strange as I remember charging them when they came in, so I try another one and the same thing happens. So I plug the charger in and the orange light comes on then goes off and the DS won't charge. It's the same with the other one. The cart was utterly legit with no spraining on the casing ( I.E. it hadn't been opened and faffed with) so can anyone tell me what the hell is going on and if I now have 2 second hand DS's to write off

[MartyG]

You haven't said whether you've tried switching them on without a card in, or with a different card afterwards.

The orange light goes off when the unit is fully charged.

[Moosegrinder]

Ah, sorry yeah, I tried it with that cart, with no cart and with a different cart. No boot and the powerlight goes off.

[yosai]

Open the DS battery compartment up and see of the SL1 sticker has been removed. If it has someones tried to flash the firmware and ****ed it up.



There should be a pink & white sticker over the top/arrowed hole.

[Moosegrinder]

No, the DS's worked when we bought them in, they belong to the shop. They only stopped working after I tried the womans Mario DS in them.

[yosai]

Sorry, misread your first post. Though it may have been someone trying to pull a fast one.

[Daragon]

Sounds like a dodgy copy of Mario to me, did she buy it from you with the DS?

[Moosegrinder]

No worries man. I'm just utterly bamboozled how putting a cart in a DS can break it.

Daragon: Nah, she just came in with it and me being the helpfull soul I am I checked it out for her . It was in a 'real' box and had proper label on the cart and everything.

[themanwithapc]

In theory, the cart shouldn't be able to do anything. To brick the DS, it would have to be able to automatically write to the firmware. Since people using homebrew seem to use the superpass and all that, it would mean that you're either on the brink of something cutting edge (albeit used for the wrong purposes) or a weird one-off glitch, which IMO should be reported to Nintendo.

[Moosegrinder]

Yeah, thats what I thought. I tried a different battery in them from another DS on the offchance there was a wierd powersurge or something (clutching at straws I know) but nah, they're definately bricked. I'll phone Nintendo tomorrow. I can see the conversation now:
Me "Um yeah, y'see I used a Mario 64 Ds cart and it's bricked 3 DS's"
Nintendo Techline "Ahahahahahahahahaha, yeah sure course it has, they can't do that leave us alone"

It's worth a try anyway.

[themanwithapc]

Yeah, thats what I thought. I tried a different battery in them from another DS on the offchance there was a wierd powersurge or something (clutching at straws I know) but nah, they're definately bricked. I'll phone Nintendo tomorrow. I can see the conversation now:
Me "Um yeah, y'see I used a Mario 64 Ds cart and it's bricked 3 DS's"
Nintendo Techline "Ahahahahahahahahaha, yeah sure course it has, they can't do that leave us alone"

It's worth a try anyway.

It might be a bit difficult, unless of course you can get hold of the actual cart (perhaps buy it off the nice woman who helped you brick your DS's)........