Fixing Broken 3DS Pre Release Unit with Unreleased Game on it

i know this is quite a bit later, but after seeing the thread bumped figured i might as well see how you got on

just for clarification its the bootrom of the 3DS that enables NTRBoot has to work, even if the nand chip is completely removed (so there is no "operating system") NTRBoot allows the system to boot up from a SD card file instead (well technically its abusing the fact the 3DS will attempt to boot from special NDS carts, ntrboothax simply uses a firmware image to chain load a file from the SD card, you could effectively use a NDS card with pretty much any 3DS FIRM payload flashed to it bypassing the need for the system nand or SD card slot (although its limited to a barebones firmware of). since commenting here previously i did actually have access to a DEV system and managed to use the dev system build of NTRBoot hax and it worked pretty much the same as on a retail system but needed a dev build of NTRboot has instead of the retail system build

if you still haven't resolved the issue so far, just get hold of a NTRboot compatible flash card and follow the guide i linked earlier, but where it asks you to use safeB9s installer, swap the boot.firm file for a copy of godmode9, if you have the nand backup on your SD card you can mount the image and extract all the contents off the nand which will allow you to rebuild any beta/debug tools found there

then as a bonus extra you can setup emunand on the SD card and use ntrboot hax to boot the system up, but without the nand working you would always need to use the NDS flashcard and magnet to be able to boot up the system