Is a Nintendo Switch UFS mod possible?

Dominator211 · Mar 18, 2022

So my question I pose to you all is this;

Ever since the original model switch had its NAND chip on a daughter board the question of storage upgrades have been on the table (there are posts from 2017 by me about this topic, I called it)

Since then people have been able to get 256GB of internal eMMC storage in a switch which is super super cool. But this is unfortunately the limit as eMMC Chios are no longer being made and 256GB is the highest capacity.

But I have a even bigger question;

Would it be theoretically possible for someone to design a daughter board with the exact dimensions of the current one except with a different BGA pinout for chips that support larger capacities ( like an iPhone chip)

There are a few roadblocks that I can see when thinking about this from a technical standpoint. Because we are switching from a eMMC chip to a UFS chip there could be some sort of “driver” incompatibility that would make it inoperable.

Another one would be that since UFS and eMMC are so different from each other, would it just be incompatible all together?

I know just enough about the hardware to know that it technically could be possible but not enough to know that it’s not possible. So if anyone with a deeper understanding of the Switch’s software can help me with this that would be super appreciated!!!

EDIT: It seems I already made a thread about this 2 to 3 years ago. My bad.

zal16 · May 30, 2023

Sorry for reviving this topic. But what if instead of changing the emmc for ufs, we used the game card input to place an sd card adapter (something similar to the sd2vita)?

EduAAA · May 30, 2023

zal16 said:
Sorry for reviving this topic. But what if instead of changing the emmc for ufs, we used the game card input to place an sd card adapter (something similar to the sd2vita)?

Eureka! That's it boy, you did it, you actually did it... gonna print 1 sd adapter right now with my invisible 3Dprinter...

impeeza · May 30, 2023

zal16 said:
Sorry for reviving this topic. But what if instead of changing the emmc for ufs, we used the game card input to place an sd card adapter (something similar to the sd2vita)?

you always can create a full emuNAND on the SD Card and have a SD card big as you can afford. you will end with a 32(64) GB emuNAND and a SD card of 900GB for a total space of 1tb to store games.

EduAAA · May 30, 2023

impeeza said:
you always can create a full emuNAND on the SD Card and have a SD card big as you can afford. you will end with a 32(64) GB emuNAND and a SD card of 900GB for a total space of 1tb to store games.

I dunno man, 1tb? And what happens when you end up with thirty hundred million games installed and you are again short of space ?

zal16 · May 31, 2023

EduAAA said:
Eureka! That's it boy, you did it, you actually did it... gonna print 1 sd adapter right now with my invisible 3Dprinter...

English is not my native language. I probably expressed myself badly.
What I meant is that if there is someone who has made or has ideas to make such an adapter. I believe that the Lotus4 chip is an impediment

averagefisherman · May 31, 2023

zal16 said:
English is not my native language. I probably expressed myself badly.
What I meant is that if there is someone who has made or has ideas to make such an adapter. I believe that the Lotus4 chip is an impediment

The DragonInjector is basically that
Or at least was that as it was C&D by Nintendo

Disregard this

evil_santa · May 31, 2023

yes it would be possible to use the gc slot as storage but it would be very slow (40mb ~)
Not worth the hassle.

There are some other options (from easy to hard listed)
- 512gb emmc (no atmosphere mods needed)
- FPGA as memory translator whit nand chips attached. so that the switch sees the memory as emmc
- hard mod the hac std T1001216, high speculative if possible (atmo mod needed)
- hard mod soc whit interposer bord to grab the PCIe lines for NVME mod (atmo mod needed)

zal16 · Jun 1, 2023

evil_santa said:
Absolutely bullshit, why you think it's something like a memory extension?
please do more research before you write this.

Back to to question
yes it would be possible to use the gc slot as storage but it would be very slow (40mb ~)
Not worth the hassle.

There are some other options (from easy to hard listed)
- 512gb emmc (no atmosphere mods needed)
- FPGA as memory translator whit nand chips attached. so that the switch sees the memory as emmc
- hard mod the hac std T1001216, high speculative if possible (atmo mod needed)
- hard mod soc whit interposer bord to grab the PCIe lines for NVME mod (atmo mod needed)

The Tegra X1 SoC supports SATA too

kidkat210 · Jun 1, 2023

averagefisherman said:
The DragonInjector is basically that
Or at least was that as it was C&D by Nintendo

Disregard this

Dragoninjector was just a payload injector that just rest in the gc slot. The only reason the injector has pins like a regular gamecard is to help protect the pins inside the reader

zal16 · Aug 3, 2023

evil_santa said:
yes it would be possible to use the gc slot as storage but it would be very slow (40mb ~)
Not worth the hassle.

There are some other options (from easy to hard listed)
- 512gb emmc (no atmosphere mods needed)
- FPGA as memory translator whit nand chips attached. so that the switch sees the memory as emmc
- hard mod the hac std T1001216, high speculative if possible (atmo mod needed)
- hard mod soc whit interposer bord to grab the PCIe lines for NVME mod (atmo mod needed)

I'm interested on the third option, because the hac std is the Lotus3 bridge chip, intermediatinsgwith gamecard and Tegra chip. The most interesting is the communication between the Tegra and Lotus3: eMMC commands. (Between Lotus3 and gamecard, is a Nintendo proprietary protocol, but don't matters).

I wonder if it would be possible to add a second eMMC directly in place of the hac std?

I have some details on this thread: https://gbatemp.net/threads/change-the-lotus3-gamecard-asic-ic-to-a-emmc-is-possible.637373/

hippy dave · Aug 3, 2023

SylverReZ · Aug 3, 2023

hippy dave said:
View attachment 386407

Lotus being a great game, so you know its powerful. :rofl2:

hippy dave · Aug 3, 2023

SylverReZ said:
Lotus being a great game, so you know its powerful.

Lotus 2 was the better game, but 3 still good.

zal16 · Aug 3, 2023

hippy dave said:
Lotus 2 was the better game, but 3 still good.

I prefer Top Gear (Lotus espirutual sucessor)

Is a Nintendo Switch UFS mod possible?

JFK's Jelly Donut

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

¡Kabito!

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

BBMB

Dat one with the Rez

BBMB

Well-Known Member

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum