Hacking [RCM Payload] Hekate - CTCaer mod

[CTCaer]

@CTCaer , can you please elaborate on reverting the GC firmware more? Or soon(TM)?

Not soon unfortunately. The data at hand is not complete.

Oddly enough. It managed to write all of it... The corruptions reached 20gb+ though. But out of fustration I just went out and got another card and it's dumping so much quicker then before.

Thanks for the quick responses. I should of checked that in the first instance. But knowing me I would of just kept messing around with it

Eh. Maybe I'm just a bit dense. But yea. The card is fake >>

Well the tool can write all of it because the card accepts that.

But when h2test tries to verify the garbage/random data it wrote, then it hits red. And it shows you the real size also.
To continue using for other stuff, you resize the partition, with a partition manager tool, to the correct size.

 

[RAGER]

Not soon unfortunately. The data at hand is not complete.

Can you please say at least, I can safely update my GC and forget about it for the time being, or still better to prevent the update?

 

[CTCaer]

Can you please say at least, I can safely update my GC and forget about it for the time being, or still better to prevent the update?

Prevent it.

It's not so easy to do it. Also the first code should be fully correct. Otherwise it can be bricked.
And that point is not reached.

 

[Krovax]

I was thinking about getting it partitioned but then that would of added to the pile of cards I never use ... Finished up with 14.8GB.

Will try my luck with getting it sent back, otherwise partition it is.

Thanks again for the quick replies

 

[emirof]

I'm getting Error<4> when trying to restore eMMC BOOT0/1 and RAW GPP with the backups I have on my 64GB exFAT formatted card. What does Error<4> mean or where can I read about it? Thanks!

 

[CTCaer]

I was thinking about getting it partitioned but then that would of added to the pile of cards I never use ... Finished up with 14.8GB.

Will try my luck with getting it sent back, otherwise partition it is.

Thanks again for the quick replies

yeah first return. It should have a big warranty normally.
Don't know your circumstances, but if everything fails, then yes, partition it is. 14.5GiB to make it sure.

I'm getting Error<4> when trying to restore eMMC BOOT0/1 and RAW GPP with the backups I have on my 64GB exFAT formatted card. What does Error<4> mean or where can I read about it? Thanks!

View attachment 139843

Read OP, or the error msg at least.
(hint: it has a filename text)

 

[emirof]

Read OP, or the error msg at least.
(hint: it has a filename text)

Thanks. I didn't find an error code explanation in OP but ok the filename should have been enough. I missed that "/Restore/" when double checking like 3 times that the files were in the right folder xD. Awesome job btw

 

[CTCaer]

Thanks. I didn't find an error code explanation in OP but ok the filename should have been enough. I missed that "/Restore/" when double checking like 3 times that the files were in the right folder xD. Awesome job btw

Have in mind this will change again.
The backup folder will have a folder with an id as a name. That's the eMMC serial number.
That's to just take the whole folder and now if it's the correct backup for your emmc.

 

[Gameboy Color]

I only have "stock" but not "stock clear logs" like I seen in youtube video

How do i clear logs with this? ty on 3.1 atm

 

[Gameboy Color]

upgraded to 3.2 still no clear log function to be seen

Im confused

 

[Quicksilver88]

@CTCaer Do you know what the 'real world' speed limit is on the SDCard slot? I have been using a SamEvo 128gb UHCC1 from 2016. It tests about 75/20mb. Its worked pretty well and my Nand backup/verify time took like 84min. It looks like these newer UHC3 cards are getting much faster write speeds 70=80mb but not much faster reads 90-100mb. In talking to someone doing a Nand backup/verify last night to a UHC3 card they were probably going to get thru it in about 50-55min, so apparently the faster write speeds will help with Nand dumps and .nsp installs.

So anyways just curious on read speeds in particular (as it relates to load times) in the SD slot, at what range will we likely not see much performance difference (is 80mb about it), and does the internal flash have more bus lanes or is it just really fast memory? There are a few games that installing internal makes a significant difference, I suspect its because they use lots of small_file assets making the large cluster size of SDcards less than ideal? Do we know how what file system the internal uses? Any thoughts on that from what you have learned so far would be appreciated and thank you for the work you are contributing for this super exciting scene.

 

[sirAnger]

upgraded to 3.2 still no clear log function to be seen

Im confused

clear log function was removed from tomger's SDFiles recently.

 

[CTCaer]

@CTCaer Do you know what the 'real world' speed limit is on the SDCard slot? I have been using a SamEvo 128gb UHCC1 from 2016. It tests about 75/20mb. Its worked pretty well and my Nand backup/verify time took like 84min. It looks like these newer UHC3 cards are getting much faster write speeds 70=80mb but not much faster reads 90-100mb. In talking to someone doing a Nand backup/verify last night to a UHC3 card they were probably going to get thru it in about 50-55min, so apparently the faster write speeds will help with Nand dumps and .nsp installs.

So anyways just curious on read speeds in particular (as it relates to load times) in the SD slot, at what range will we likely not see much performance difference (is 80mb about it), and does the internal flash have more bus lanes or is it just really fast memory? There are a few games that installing internal makes a significant difference, I suspect its because they use lots of small_file assets making the large cluster size of SDcards less than ideal? Do we know how what file system the internal uses? Any thoughts on that from what you have learned so far would be appreciated and thank you for the work you are contributing for this super exciting scene.

The switch speed limit is 104MB/s raw.

In hekate the RAM is untrained and this reduces the speed to about 24MB/s.
If you include the execution time this falls more, to around 18-22MB/s.

So the backup/verify will not help you test it.

Now the real world test.
What you are testing is wrong. The sequential read does not play a big role.

U1 vs U3: there's a great deal in this.
U1 means 10MB/s minimum speed at all times (seq or random).
U3 means 30MB/s minimum.

So when a game starts loading assets from here and there, the loading times will be a great deal better on a U3 card.

And it's not the cluster size. The cluster size helps. If you write 1 small file it will still take a whole cluster.
And because the read is the whole cluster this makes it faster than having let's say 512B cluster. That's why exFAT is faster. Because 128KB cluster size.
It's about fs cluster size vs sd card physical block size.
Anyway for compatibility this is true: FAT32 /w 32KB cluster size. exFAT /w 128KB cluster size.

The internal emmc and its buss are way faster than a sd card with a UHS-I bus. Both in speed and I/O throughput.
Not even a UHS-II card with a UHS-II bus or card reader can win the eMMC.
The eMMC uses FAT32 for SYSTEM and USER. But this doesn't play a big role if you have such a fast bus and chip.

TL;DR:
The best speeds in switch can only be achieved with a UHS-I or UHS-II card that is U3 compatible.
(The UHS-II card will fallback to UHS-I, but its chip is very fast and will help with random accesses.)

For filesystem it's exFAT 128KB.
(Except if you have a buggy switch fw version and you should use FAT32 32KB to avoid corruptions.)

 

[RAGER]

So the U-I bus anyway will benefit from U-3 card???

 

[CTCaer]

The UHS-I bus supports U3 grade.

The U grades are for UHS-I cards and for UHS-II cards that fallback to UHS-I bus.

Also the U grade talks about the card not the bus. As I said, it means that the card can sustain certain speeds.

And there's no need to say that a UHS-II card already supports U3 and up.

 

[RAGER]

I know that U-3 cards are backwards compatible, but I didn`t know that U-3 card will be faster sometimes (at least at minimum speeds) in U-1 slot than U-1 card.

 

[CTCaer]

With what U-3 cards are backwards compatible? With what?
We are not talking about non-UHS data buses here.

You are still confused about buses and U speed grades.

there's no u-1 card or slot.

There's UHS-I and UHS-II data buses.

The U1/U3 are only speed grades. A minimum limit that the card can sustain all the time.
You can have a U3 grade card that says 100MB/s reads, but if you read all of it, you'll see an average waaaaaay less than 100MB/s.

Anyway, it's a fact.
U1 card sustains minimum 10MB/s at every time.
U3 card sustains minimum 30MB/s at every time.
UHS-I is not U1. -> UHS does not equal U.

 

[RAGER]

@CTCaer
thx, you're right, I was confused by this new SDcard's markings. Maybe moders can remove my stupid offtopic.

 

[Quicksilver88]

@CTCaer

Thank you for the robust explanation about both the SD bus and cards details.

So while sequential reads on the U1 and U3 cards may not look much different, random non-sequential reads could be as much as 3x faster (30vs10). I think that means I will hold out and buy a U3 card on my next upgrade.

Also I suspected that the EEMC would have more lanes and be fast memory, damned I just wish we could easily upgrade it.

 

[CTCaer]

@CTCaer

Thank you for the robust explanation about both the SD bus and cards details.

So while sequential reads on the U1 and U3 cards may not look much different, random non-sequential reads could be as much as 3x faster (30vs10). I think that means I will hold out and buy a U3 card on my next upgrade.

Also I suspected that the EEMC would have more lanes and be fast memory, damned I just wish we could easily upgrade it.

The eMMC is already fast. 280MB/s sustained and 400MB/s bursts are not enough?
It could be better but probably not at these size (32GB).
Also it is easily upgradable (if you use hekate to boot).