[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] DocHoliday77:
I'm really glad to hear you managed to secure a replacement mobo so cheap! And thank you for all the information. It does sound an awful lot like the bricks that happen when a 4.4.2 modem is flashed on MJB firmware. (Note, this is only on MJB. It will not brick if flashing the 4.4.2 modem on MJ2 or earlier it appears. Modem won't work, but it won't brick either.) But that just deepens the mystery as this happened on different combinations here. But I am practically convinced it's due to the modem though.

Enewman17's update methods in the General section does pretty much the exact same thing as these, except with two differences. His PATCHES the MJB modem just like the ota, wheras mine wrote the complete NE4 modem outright. We have done this countless times before on previous builds, including 4.3, which is why I thought it was perfectly safe. (I did this so we wouldn't have the absolute requirement of being on the MJB modem to be able to update).

The other difference (kind of 2 in 1 if you want to look at it that way), was I used a newer update-binary that i knew had worked before. This meant I had to use the "dd" method to write the images though, which again, is exactly how we've done this in the past. The one used by enewman17's used the "Write Raw Image" command if I'm not mistaken. Either way, the result should be identical, which is why I don't think this was the cause of the problems. I could be wrong though.... (I'll also point out that a number of people have ended up with the 4.3 or older modem on 4.4.2 firmware and used my NE4/NE6/NF2/NH2 modem flashable zips (which also use "dd") to restore the correct one, and there have been zero failures with those)

The thing I don't get, is regardless of how you get there, the end result is the same. Whether you patch the MJB modem, or flash the NE4 one, the result should be identical. The NE4 one used, was originally patched to get it there.

Also, for the I747M devices, they are able to fully update via Odin, which does not rely on a patch, but flashes the complete modem. So this confuses me as it means that patching it is not the only safe way to update.

The more I try to think about this the more confusing it seems to get! There's also the fact that this method did work just fine for some people, myself included! So why did it brick others, even if they started from the exact same point that I did???

All I can really say for certain, is the 4.4.2 update, has been the worst I have ever encountered in terms of reliability and safety! Even with enewman17's method, AND the official OTA, I have seen far to many problems, failures and bricks! Luckily, those have not been as severe as what happened here though. But I have been dealing quite a lot with firmware, OTA's, and other methods of flashing these things for a few years now, and I have never seen so many problems!

Anyway, I'll end this book of a post at that...i haven't decided if I will re-release these or not yet. If i do, it'll only be for troubleshooting purposes and will restrict them to only flash on previously updated devices. Kinda gunshy about the whole thing though so I may just request this be closed permanently.

And again, I am very sorry any of this happened at all. I truly thought it was perfectly safe, and had expectations that it would end up as the safest and easiest way to update. If i had any doubt of that, I never would've started this thread to begin with....