Team-Xecuter has been quiet since v6.0.0 officially rolled out for the Nintendo Switch last week, but they are back with this time an amazing revolutionary update to their SX OS

And you may ask why is it 'revolutionary', well because for first time a CFW for the Switch contains 'EmuNAND', just like back in the days of the 3DS scene, so check out their official PR announcement below:

Hello friends! Team Xecuter is happy to bring you the official 2.0 release of your beloved SX OS.

A lot has happened since the initial release of SX OS a few months ago. This is far from a simple proof of concept custom firmware anymore. With this major update we bring some exciting new functionality to the table. We suggest you grab a beverage of your choice and read on to learn more!

• EmuNAND

Lets start with the major new feature in 2.0: EmuNAND.

Those who have a background in the Nintendo 3DS hacking scene know what this is, but let's quickly elaborate for those of you who are new to the game:

The Switch uses a NAND Flash storage chip to store all of the system software, as well as your save games and other assets. With EmuNAND we create a shadow copy of this storage from which you can run SX OS. The benefits from doing this are that you keep your SX OS "world" separated from your original firmware. This also means you can keep your switch on an older firmware, while running the latest and greatest firmware inside of your EmuNAND. As we all know, older is better.. when it comes to defeating system security at least. And newer is better when it comes to enjoying the latest content!

Another upside of consolidating your SX OS usage from your original firmware usage is vastly reducing the risk of a network ban. You can run SX OS in EmuNAND, of course with our Stealth Mode enabled, and anything that is littered on the EmuNAND's filesystem is not visible to the switch in Original Firmware mode.

One thing to note is that SX OS EmuNAND works a bit differently compared to what some of you might think of as "traditional" EmuNAND where the entire NAND is copied to a separate partition on the MicroSD card. With SX OS EmuNAND your EmuNAND partition lives inside of your regular NAND. The primary reason for this is that occupying 32GB of a MicroSD card is a bit wasteful. The secondary reason is by utilizing the existing flash storage we can guarantee performance and reliability.

You can set up EmuNAND by booting into the SX OS boot menu (hold Volume + during boot) and going into the revamped "Options" menu. There you will find a section called EmuNAND which will guide you through the setup. By default SX OS will allocate 15GB for your EmuNAND partition. If you want to use a different size hit the "advanced" button before creating your EmuNAND.

SX OS will boot into EmuNAND by default if it finds a valid EmuNAND partition. If you don't want to boot into EmuNAND, there's a button in the SX OS Boot menu which will allow you to continue booting with EmuNAND disabled.

• NAND Dumping, Restoring, GPT Repair

As mentioned in the previous section we have revamped our SX OS boot menu's option screen quite a bit. For the tinkerers and advanced users we introduced an easy method of dumping/restoring your NAND flash storage. Another neat addition for people who had an unhappy accident while playing with their NAND is the "GPT Repair" option. This will repair your NAND's partition table if you ever need to. Again, this functionality is for advanced users who know what they're doing only. Please be cautious when using this functionality.

• LayeredFS working on 6.0

With our (early) support for 6.0 we introduced a regression where "LayeredFS" would no longer work. This has been corrected and you can now enjoy your game modifications/hacks again on the latest official firmware.

• Homebrew NSP Compatibility

We got word that the community has started distributing homebrew titles as NSP files recently. These NSP files cut some corners in the way they are crafted, but we decided to introduce support to make them usable with SX OS anyway. So you can now enjoy your favorite homebrew titles that comes as installable NSP files and launch them directly from the home screen!

• Closing Words

Whew, we're sorry for the wall of text. We tried to keep things as concise and easy to understand as possible. SX OS 2.0 is a big and important update, but certainly won't be the last. We know you're all waiting for even more functionality that is in high demand. Rest assured, we work as fast as we can to scrap these items off of the bucket list and bring them to you, the loyal end user, as fast as we can!

Enough chit-chat, you can update to SX OS 2.0 right *now* by using the built-in updater if you are running SX OS 1.9 or higher. Otherwise head to our website and grab a copy! Enjoy!

--< Team-Xecuter - Rocking the Switch in 2018 and beyond! >--​

Source: MaxConsole

 

[chrisisx]

Doubt they are not capable since it would be similar to how they mount carts for xci loading, but instead of mounting a game they would instead mount a partition for the NAND.

They did mention the reason of putting it to switch internal memory - "The secondary reason is by utilizing the existing flash storage we can guarantee performance and reliability."

I guess putting it in MicroSD will be very slow and unusable hence this decision.

 

[Rune]

Doubt they are not capable since it would be similar to how they mount carts for xci loading, but instead of mounting a game they would instead mount a partition for the NAND.

Then why not do it? Why force you to use and divide the onboard NAND and restrict you to just 32gb between two partitions, especially when there are single games that take up nearly 15gb alone?
Why would speed and transfer rates of mSD cards be an issue when games can already be installed and run from there?

 

[phillyrider807]

Im just glad all this stuff is happening now. Only game i care about playing online is smash bros. So if they have to release this now to work out all the bugs in time for Smash then im all for it.

 

[TheZander]

Is there a reason why they made it inside the actual nand and not the sd card or did they have to resort to using the nand because sd was out of the question

 

[Deleted User]

Is there a reason why they made it inside the actual nand and not the sd card or did they have to resort to using the nand because sd was out of the question

The reason is actually far simpler than you expect

>when you push broken patches so TX can steal them and then amend commit with working patches.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

— Rei (@Reisyukaku) September 23, 2018

in other words, copying without checking.

 

[marveldragon]

Then why not do it? Why force you to use and divide the onboard NAND and restrict you to just 32gb between two partitions, especially when there are single games that take up nearly 15gb alone?
Why would speed and transfer rates of mSD cards be an issue when games can already be installed and run from there?

Transfer speed are already a small issue when you are playing a game, if you have a slow card games take longer to load.

The SD card is being taxed when playing a game as it is loading as much info off the card as possible, mostly for 3D games that have large textures and environments. Adding the toll of the OS handling data cashing and virtual memory management would require very fast speeds from the SD card for it not to cause issues.

I am not 100% sure of the speeds the switch's OS needs or uses but thinking of how seamless it is to return to the home screen, take a photo/video or even put the console to sleep when in the middle of an intense boss battle it is not insignificant. We might see these things take several seconds to occur if not crash if on the SD card.

Wasn't the 3DS's emuNAND notorious for such events from occurring?

 

[guily6669]

They did mention the reason of putting it to switch internal memory - "The secondary reason is by utilizing the existing flash storage we can guarantee performance and reliability."

I guess putting it in MicroSD will be very slow and unusable hence this decision.

Screw this, I was going crazy, then its not a real emunand mehh...

If its patching on the sysnand then its not a real emunand in the fact that we would remove the M-SD and the console would look 99% normal to nintendo eyes. Having something patched inside sysnand is almost the same thing sysnand is all hacked and still can make things go bad .

Transfer speed are already a small issue when you are playing a game, if you have a slow card games take longer to load.

The SD card is being taxed when playing a game as it is loading as much info off the card as possible, mostly for 3D games that have large textures and environments. Adding the toll of the OS handling data cashing and virtual memory management would require very fast speeds from the SD card for it not to cause issues.

I am not 100% sure of the speeds the switch's OS needs or uses but thinking of how seamless it is to return to the home screen, take a photo/video or even put the console to sleep when in the middle of an intense boss battle it is not insignificant. We might see these things take several seconds to occur if not crash if on the SD card.

Wasn't the 3DS's emuNAND notorious for such events from occurring?

Never had problems on my 3DS, but I totally notice the emunand a bit slower however nothing that is a defeated purpose and I also have a very slow SD and very slow M-SD on the GW card, also I don't think 3DS could read\write any fast compared to Switch, but then again games were a lot simpler and smaller too as its a very low performance device even when it came out...

With a good M-SD card (+they continue improving) I think emunand will work fine even if a little slower, a new good A1 M-SD even have some advantages over a PC HDD that so many ppl still use as a all-in-one on a computer, HDDs can have much higher continuous reads\write, but access times are crap, low iops, low 4K performance and they tend to be very unstable.

As long as the menus and everything don't lag, I don't mind waiting a few more seconds to load a game. All we know is all original a digital bought game on a medium speed or above M-SD loads always faster than the original game card, so it might still have a few room for emunand and maybe get around the same loading speeds as the original game...

Can't wait is for real emunand on the M-SD to come out, I really can't wait to see speed of emunand vs original.

ps: But if nintendo had put a better m-SD with support for the faster M-SD card formats, then we would basically be able to get almost SSD performance out of it, but they are also worthless over expensive 4 now (I heard someone wants to make a HUGE SD regarding to space and work as SSD bringing its own controller inside, but it will probably be too late and too expensive and maybe a new format or the latest high speed versions only).

 

[Krazyeye]

I can confirm that I installed an NSP called Dream Alone in emu nand, I played the game (told me there was an update - even though I had no internet). I then switched to O/F and the game doesn't show up.
So now we can install nsp - without fear of being banned - only you will need to download updates for these elsewhere in emunand.

So it seems like any game updates need to be downloaded physically from elsewhere then install the game update nsp in emunand; since the game DOES NOT show up in original firmware.

 

[TheZander]

The reason is actually far simpler than you expect
https://twitter.com/Reisyukaku/status/1043915891317051392

in other words, copying without checking.

I don't get it did rehax add emunand?

 

[jakkal]

The reason is actually far simpler than you expect
https://twitter.com/Reisyukaku/status/1043915891317051392

in other words, copying without checking.

why are you people so gullible?

 

[D-Jay]

Then why not do it? Why force you to use and divide the onboard NAND and restrict you to just 32gb between two partitions, especially when there are single games that take up nearly 15gb alone?
Why would speed and transfer rates of mSD cards be an issue when games can already be installed and run from there?

NAND on a mSD... really, dude? C'mon... just think about it again.

 

[GuyInDogSuit]

Yeah, it's supposed to keep you from getting banned somehow, though the emuNAND partitions the internal storage itself rather than relocating to your external SD, so the Switch's telemetry will report the NAND size back to Nintendo and get you banned regardless. It's possible it can save you from a brick, though, but that's yet to be determined.

 

[guily6669]

Yeah but how will they prevent nintendo from reading if they have full access to the console and probably can read the whole nand and see its content?

 

[SirNapkin1334]

HUh. Finally a reason to buy Sx OS though I’ll bet there’s going to be a critical bug or something

 

[Glitchk0ud1001]

Rip people who updated to 6.0.0 for switch ness online app,

i am on 6.0 and still waiting for definitive way to hack the switch like ntrboothax

 

[marveldragon]

Yeah but how will they prevent nintendo from reading if they have full access to the console and probably can read the whole nand and see its content?

That would be an extreme invasion of privacy and illegal in many places. They would face legal action from many countries for doing such a thing. They are however allowed to know info like the switch sending them a request for a license validation for a game installed, activity logs of games you played, or error logs. All of which you arguably voluntarily provide them. The cannot go in snoop around and pull some sort of NSA stuff on you.

 

[Deleted User]

That would be an extreme invasion of privacy and illegal in many places. They would face legal action from many countries for doing such a thing. They are however allowed to know info like the switch sending them a request for a license validation for a game installed, activity logs of games you played, or error logs. All of which you arguably voluntarily provide them. The cannot go in snoop around and pull some sort of NSA stuff on you.

Nandsize is checked.

 

[gbadl]

How hard would coding an emunand loader be? If able to dump an emunand that has a licensed SXOS pre-installed in it then maybe it would be possible to copy that emunand to another console. The emunand loader would then just have to tell the SXOS inside the emunand that it is running on the same console it was originally on. SXOS license sharing will then be a thing.

 

[Lpckid]

Now for firmware spoof 2.1 be top notch. Emunand micro 2.1 is best bet incase something goes wrong be safer and stop saying sx is stealing before they get mad and cut everyone off be a team.

 

[lolcatzuru]

im a little new here but isnt emunand kinda pointless? i mean if it mimics your actually NAND, and creates a " shadow copy" which you uses with hacks and such isnt it also borrowing your certs and what have you? so even if you were to hypothetically get banned, your cert would be banned regardless of emunand or not.