New major updates made in the $3 Pikofly Nintendo Switch modchip project

27002868.jpg

Late last year, a homebrew developer made a massive announcement: there was a new Nintendo Switch modchip coming soon, and it would support not just launch units, but also more modern OLED and Mariko Switch revisions (though not Erista). The icing on the cake was that the modchip to hack the Switch only cost $3. and consist of a RP2040-Zero unit, which hugely contrasted with the only other available modchip--the HWfly--which went for over $100 at the time. Dubbed the Pikofly chip, it would, in theory, be able to install custom firmware on your Switch.

Scene members quickly took notice, as many began working on breaking down how the chip functioned, with lots of information available in the Pikofly discussion thread. And now, thanks to their hard work, you can now take advantage of it, in order to get the Pikofly modchip working on your Switch. GBAtemp user Rehius has published a GitHub project page that has a firmware file and further documentation, while Flynnsmt4 managed to decrypt parts of the code, even creating a cycle-accurate emulator that further explains how the chip works. With these new milestones, people are already discussing techniques to solder the chip to their consoles.

If you're curious to see more, and how this unfolds, head on over to the Pikofly thread to see the latest discussion and updates.
 

The Real Jdbye

*is birb*
Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Messages
23,355
Trophies
4
Location
Space
XP
13,944
Country
Norway
I always wondered why use a Pi at all. This seems like massive overkill to me, seems like something the average microcontroller should handle, something along the lines of an AtMega. Then again, I don’t know exactly what code this is running, so I may be entirely off-base and that cortex is doing voodoo on the Switch. I suppose availability of resources and big community make it more attractive.
RP2040 boards are cheaper than most other alternatives. Even cheaper than Arduino clones. But what makes them special is the PIO (programmable I/O) functionality, which makes possible things an ATmega just couldn't do, because emulating hardware protocols in software is very slow (not to mention very timing sensitive, and you don't have precise timing with a 8/16mhz clock) and ATmega chips already run at a slow clock speed. PIO negates the need for emulating them in software.
AFAIK, Switch chips use glitching, similar to Xbox 360 RGH. This is rather timing sensitive, so it's possible an ATmega chip is just too slow for the accurate timing that is needed to make it work reliably every time. In my own experience with Arduinos, timing sensitive I/O is really where they fall apart.
A Teensy would be an option, but, those cost several times more than a Pi Pico.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Foxi4

Foxi4

Endless Trash
Global Moderator
Joined
Sep 13, 2009
Messages
30,828
Trophies
3
Location
Gaming Grotto
XP
29,861
Country
Poland
The RP2040 has a special PIO hardware, which lets you execute very deliberate instructions in a single clock cycle. It's a compromise between bitbanging stuff with a CPU, or a very expensive CPLD/FPGA. It's small yet powerful, letting you even drive displays in real time, even unattended if you can program the DMA chain, for absolute 0% CPU usage.

To my knowledge, you need very short pulses to glitch the hardware (reverse-engineering the dumped firmware says it overclocks to 333MHz!), so I highly doubt a pity ATMega could handle this job. Or at least, definitely not an 8bit one.
Oh, that makes sense, thanks bud. I guess I’m just more used to seeing an ATMega 32U4 for stuff like this, but tighter timings and higher frequency requirements make sense if it’s sort of like a reset glitch hack.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sono

orangy57

bruh
Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2015
Messages
919
Trophies
1
Age
21
Location
New Jersey
XP
2,966
Country
United States
I always wondered why use a Pi at all. This seems like massive overkill to me, seems like something the average microcontroller should handle, something along the lines of an AtMega. Then again, I don’t know exactly what code this is running, so I may be entirely off-base and that cortex is doing voodoo on the Switch. I suppose availability of resources and big community make it more attractive.
pretty sure the raspberry pi pico is just a microcontroller made by the raspberry pi ppl. The raspberry pi zero and regular pi are the ones with the arm processors. Raspberry pi naming schemes are getting garbled now since they have a tons of different SKUs that do mostly the same stuff. At least it's not as hard as finding the right arduino clone to use

EDIT: I'm wrong, even the pico even has an ARM Cortex processor inside but it's super low-power. I wonder if it was picked for convenience or if they needed more performance than an average microcontroller for some reason
 

JonJaded

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 22, 2016
Messages
682
Trophies
0
XP
2,969
Country
United States
So cool so see this get rumored and come to life over the past couple of months. Truly amazing community we have here.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • AncientBoi @ AncientBoi:
    ooowwww a new way for me to beat NFS 510 :D @SylverReZ
    +1
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    @AncientBoi, Yeah, believe you can do PSP games as well. But a Pi5 is much powerful in comparison.
    +2
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Not sure about other models of Pi4 but the Pi 4 B with 8GBs OCed to 2Ghz handles PSP really great except like 1 game I found and it is playable it just looks bad lol Motor Storm Arctic something or other.
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Other games I can have turned up to like 2X and all kinds of enhancements, Motorstorm hmmm nope 1X and no enhancements lol
  • Veho @ Veho:
    Waiting for Anbernic's rg[whatever]SP price announcement, gimme.
    +1
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    I will admit that one does seem more interesting than the usual Ambernic ones, and I already liked those.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    I dread the price point.
    +1
  • Veho @ Veho:
    This looks like one of their premium models, so... $150 :glare:
    +1
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    To me that seems reasonable.
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    I mean since basically all the games are errmmm free lol
  • Veho @ Veho:
    I mean yeah sure but the specs are the same as a $50 model, it's just those pesky "quality of life" things driving up the price, like an actually working speaker, or buttons that don't melt, and stuff like that.
    +1
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    I think all in my Pi 4 was well north of 200 bucks 150ish for the Pi 4 the case the fancy cooler, then like 70 for the 500GB MicroSD then like 70 for the Xbox controller. But honestly it's a nice set up I really enjoy and to me was worth every penny. (even bought more controllers for 2 or 4 player games.) hmmm have never played any 2 player games yet :(
  • Veho @ Veho:
    Yeah that's what I hate about the RPi, it's supposedly $30 or something but it takes an additional $200 of accessories to actually turn it into a working something.
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    yes that's the expensive part lol
  • Veho @ Veho:
    I mean sure it's flexible and stuff but so is uremum but it's fiddly.
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Yeah a lot of it I consider a hobby, using Batocera I am constantly adjusting the collection adding and removing stuff, scraping the artwork. Haven't even started on some music for the theme... Also way down the road I am considering attempting to do a WiiFlow knock off lol
  • Veho @ Veho:
    I want everything served on a plate plz ktnx, "work" is too much work for me.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    Hmm, with that in mind, maybe a complete out-the-box solution with all the games collected, pacthed and optimized for me would be worth $150 :unsure:
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Yeah it's all choice and that's a good thing :)
  • Bunjolio @ Bunjolio:
    animal crossing new leaf 11pm music
  • Bunjolio @ Bunjolio:
    avatars-kKKZnC8XiW7HEUw0-KdJMsw-t1080x1080.jpg
    wokey d pronouns
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    What its like to do online shopping in 1998: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwag5XE8oJo
    SylverReZ @ SylverReZ: What its like to do online shopping in 1998: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwag5XE8oJo