Hacking Half-Bricked Switch (Downgraded OS)

Notshane · Jan 24, 2019

TheZoc said:
Would updating your slot be good enough for you? It wouldn't work with 4.0 or lower firmware (iirc). If it is, it should be possible to do that update.

It doesn't work below 4.0 as it is. As I said earlier, it straight up crashes now, even when I go back to 2.1.0 firmware through Choi. So, having it work at all would be nice. Since I don't have the option at all to load games below 4.0, I could care less about updating the GC Slot by this point.

So, as you can see, that's why the choice doesn't matter to me. Also, I can see you're new to this thread, but I mentioned earlier I have two Switchs. One for casual use and the other for homebrew. I don't really know what benefit I get from being able to load games games below 4.0, unless a coldboot exploit is discovered. But even then, I don't mind loading up through auto-RCM all the time.

After all, it's as Reggie said, but it can apply to homebrew as well through a bit of rephrasing. "We believe the easiest way for you to load payloads and have a homebrew experience with Atmosphere is with your mobile phone. It's always there, it's always with you." As long as my phone is with me, auto-RCM is the nicest option I got, I can stick on 5.1 and if my GC Slot updates, I can play Ultimate.

PrEtZaL · Jan 24, 2019

The GS will be disabled if your fuse count matches a fw prior to the GS update which yours does as I understand it, in later versions of atmosphere.

If you've already updated your GS slot then you need to disable this feature to allow it work in 5.1.0.

Notshane · Jan 24, 2019

PrEtZaL said:
The GS will be disabled if your fuse count matches a fw prior to the GS update which yours does as I understand it, in later versions of atmosphere.

If you've already updated your GS slot then you need to disable this feature to allow it work in 5.1.0.

Oh...so, I go to Hekate, load "STOCK" and I can read games again? Well, that sounds easy enough! Why didn't anyone else just tell me that earlier? Oh, well, I suppose I did say I wanted to keep my fuse count...hmm, well, if there's truly no other reason for me to ever go below 5.1 again, aside from a coldboot exploit that could happen, I will just go into Hekate now then and load off "STOCK" since that's all I have to do, right? Then it will read my Game Cards again!

GothicIII · Jan 24, 2019

Notshane said:
Oh...so, I go to Hekate, load "STOCK" and I can read games again? Well, that sounds easy enough! Why didn't anyone else just tell me that earlier? Oh, well, I suppose I did say I wanted to keep my fuse count...hmm, well, if there's truly no other reason for me to ever go below 5.1 again, aside from a coldboot exploit that could happen, I will just go into Hekate now then and load off "STOCK" since that's all I have to do, right? Then it will read my Game Cards again!

Tell us if that worked.
This is an information I didn't know about and I thought I'm well informed.

mdmachine · Jan 24, 2019

Pretty sure if you load stock or cfw in hekate it'll prevent the fuse burning. Employ AutoRCM to ensure you never accidently boot non-rcm and burn em.

Also Ultimate already has newer updates that afaik cant be patched to work below 6.x.x.
So even at 5.1.0 once you get it fully working and all good, make another full NAND backup at that state. Then consider updating again to 6.2.0. As everything pretty much works, and in the long run new games and updates will eventually no longer work on lower FWs.

As you experienced, as time progresses you'll encounter more and more homebrew that simply does not have full reverse compatibility on older FWs without resorting to older builds of said homebrew. Plus you dont have much to lose, if you dont like it you can roll back to 5.1.0. I've done it and its vastly less of a pain than your instance of 2 to 5.

Lastly, keys, if you insist on being on 5.1.0 and want to attempt to patch newer games in hopes that it'll work, your gunna need keys from 6.2.0 in order to process newer games and patch them to a new "required" FW. Granted many wont work anyways, but it wont even decrypt newer games (at 6.2.0 requirement) without up to date keys.

PrEtZaL · Jan 24, 2019

The nogc patching was implemented from atmosphere 0.81

By default, nogc patches will automatically apply if the user is booting into 4.0.0+ with fuses from <= 3.0.2.
Users can override this functionality via the nogc entry in the stratosphere section of BCT.ini:
- Setting nogc = 1 will force enable nogc patches.
- Setting nogc = 0 will force disable nogc patches.
If patches are enabled but not found for the booting system, a fatal error will be thrown.
- This should prevent running FS without nogc patches after updating to an unsupported system version.

Notshane · Jan 24, 2019

mdmachine said:
Pretty sure if you load stock or cfw in hekate it'll prevent the fuse burning. Employ AutoRCM to ensure you never accidently boot non-rcm and burn em.

Choi already enforced that. That's how I was able to go back to 2.1 in the first place was through auto-RCM helping me out. So, going to Stock with Hekate helps me out, huh? I will keep that in mind if I do wind up loading 6.2 after reading all of what you said. I can do it then.

mdmachine said:
Ultimate already has newer updates that afaik cant be patched to work below 6.x.x.
So even at 5.1.0 once you get it fully working and all good, make another full NAND backup at that state. Then consider updating again to 6.2.0. As everything pretty much works, and in the long run new games and updates will eventually no longer work on lower FWs.

I had 2.1, 5.1 (Choi), went back to 2.1 (Choi) and then 5.1 again. I made a backup of 5.1 from the first time I did Choi, so can I still use that NAND? Or, do I need yet another NAND for 5.1, the second time coming to it?

mdmachine said:
As you experienced, as time progresses you'll encounter more and more homebrew that simply does not have full reverse compatibility on older FWs without resorting to older builds of said homebrew. Plus you dont have much to lose, if you dont like it you can roll back to 5.1.0. I've done it and its vastly less of a pain than your instance of 2 to 5.

So, from 5.1 (Choi), can I just go to 6.2 right now through Choi with no worries then? And also, do I say yes or no to exFAT for 6.2?

mdmachine said:
Lastly, keys, if you insist on being on 5.1.0 and want to attempt to patch newer games in hopes that it'll work, your gunna need keys from 6.2.0 in order to process newer games and patch them to a new "required" FW. Granted many wont work anyways, but it wont even decrypt newer games (at 6.2.0 requirement) without up to date keys.

Hmm, and the Homebrew Menu does work on 6.2 then?

PrEtZaL said:
The nogc patching was implemented from atmosphere 0.81

By default, nogc patches will automatically apply if the user is booting into 4.0.0+ with fuses from <= 3.0.2.

Users can override this functionality via the nogc entry in the stratosphere section of BCT.ini:

Setting nogc = 1 will force enable nogc patches.

Setting nogc = 0 will force disable nogc patches.

If patches are enabled but not found for the booting system, a fatal error will be thrown.

This should prevent running FS without nogc patches after updating to an unsupported system version.

So, enabling "nogc patch" will...patch it?

mdmachine · Jan 24, 2019

Notshane said:
Choi already enforced that. That's how I was able to go back to 2.1 in the first place was through auto-RCM helping me out. So, going to Stock with Hekate helps me out, huh? I will keep that in mind if I do wind up loading 6.2 after reading all of what you said. I can do it then.

Yes (someone correct me if i'm wrong) but when you boot into hekate and pick stock, it should disable all fuse checks for sleep+boot.

Notshane said:
I had 2.1, 5.1 (Choi), went back to 2.1 (Choi) and then 5.1 again. I made a backup of 5.1 from the first time I did Choi, so can I still use that NAND? Or, do I need yet another NAND for 5.1, the second time coming to it?

If that backup of 5.1.0 was working how you wanted it, then it should be fine. Its a clone of whatever state your system was, at that time.

As a standard practice myself, I just timestamp them and keep them, then make another new one anyways. TIP: I usually try my hardest to keep installs off of my NAND (and onto SD instead) so the backup compresses to a manageable size (about 2GB).

Better safe than sorry!!!

Notshane said:
So, from 5.1 (Choi), can I just go to 6.2 right now through Choi with no worries then? And also, do I say yes or no to exFAT for 6.2?

Yup, sometimes I get weird behavior from Choi making a hakate.ini on the SD card root. Since I use latest version of atmosphere (kosmos) I just get rid of it. Even if you use FAT32, say yes to ExFAT. That way later for any reason you want to utilize a card in that format. Its already all set. Also after the update to 6.x.x itll ask to update your joycons. I "think" its to prevent the joycon hardmods? But I have seen no ill effects from it (even when rolling back).

Notshane said:
Hmm, and the Homebrew Menu does work on 6.2 then?

Yup, might want to make sure you have the latest version. I recommend for your sake to check out the Kosmos package as it includes all the latest versions of whatever you pick. Plus sig patches which will enable running backups. Plus being the latest build of atmosphere, will have all those features (NOGC).

Moving forward as homebrew advances, might want to find the NSP of HomeBrew Menu, as it allows to run with higher memory. Some newer stuff out there will crash without it. But worry about that down the road.

Check kosmos again later too, because a new update of atmosphere (0.8.3) just dropped with warm-rebooting, not sure if Kosmos updated yet. But they are usually very prompt (comes with a auo-updater homebrew app as well!!!).

Notshane · Jan 24, 2019

mdmachine said:
Yes (someone correct me if i'm wrong) but when you boot into hekate and pick stock, it should disable all fuse checks for sleep+boot.

Yeah, maybe I will just wait until someone clarifies this.

mdmachine said:
If that backup of 5.1.0 was working how you wanted it, then it should be fine. Its a clone of whatever state your system was, at that time.

As a standard practice myself, I just timestamp them and keep them, then make another new one anyways. TIP: I usually try my hardest to keep installs off of my NAND (and onto SD instead) so the backup compresses to a manageable size (about 2GB).

Better safe than sorry!!!

It did work completely fine with the first backup. If anything, I'd say the second time to 5.1 is worse, technically speaking, hahah.

mdmachine said:
Yup, sometimes I get weird behavior from Choi making a hakate.ini on the SD card root. Since I use latest version of atmosphere (kosmos) I just get rid of it. Even if you use FAT32, say yes to ExFAT. That way later for any reason you want to utilize a card in that format. Its already all set. Also after the update to 6.x.x itll ask to update your joycons. I "think" its to prevent the joycon hardmods? But I have seen no ill effects from it (even when rolling back).

Oh shoot, I forgot about that. You're suppose to backup the "hekate.ini" every time you change firmwares...right?

Oh, so yeah, that's what I did then. I did 6.2 (Choi) with exFAT support, currently backing up the NAND once again to then piece together with Joiner.

mdmachine said:
Yup, might want to make sure you have the latest version. I recommend for your sake to check out the Kosmos package as it includes all the latest versions of whatever you pick. Plus sig patches which will enable running backups. Plus being the latest build of atmosphere, will have all those features (NOGC).

Moving forward as homebrew advances, might want to find the NSP of HomeBrew Menu, as it allows to run with higher memory. Some newer stuff out there will crash without it. But worry about that down the road.

Once I find an NSP of the Homebrew Menu, I would sure like to do that. Since it's on my Homebrew Switch, getting banned from NSP channels won't mean much on one that has no account tethered to it to begin with.

mdmachine said:
Check kosmos again later too, because a new update of atmosphere (0.8.3) just dropped with warm-rebooting, not sure if Kosmos updated yet. But they are usually very prompt (comes with a auo-updater homebrew app as well!!!).

Kosmos has an updater in the Homebrew Menu, but I suppose I should just look directly on the GitHub, huh?

Thanks for all of this help! I always appreciate getting help from multiple sources to help clear my self-paranoia of homebrewing the Switch. If I can get the GC Slot to work after all this, that would be terrific.

mdmachine · Jan 24, 2019

As of now I dont think the new reboot feature works with kosmos package as-is for now. The updater and the sdsetup site link directly to the github so its whatever preference you have.

And I never made a backup of hekate.ini, just that the Choi makes another for safety reasons, that is no longer needed. I do make the occasional backup of the SD card itself, minus the Nintendo folder. The new app nxmtp makes this a quick breeze!

And here is the NSP of Homebrew Menu Loader, and an example of something that requires this without crashing is McOsu.

Notshane · Jan 25, 2019

mdmachine said:
And here is the NSP of Homebrew Menu Loader, and an example of something that requires this without crashing is McOsu.

Uh..you lost me a little on this part.

mdmachine · Jan 25, 2019

It's really something that you don't have to concern yourself much with at this point. But when you run hbml normally (via the album) it only has a certain allocation of memory.
A app (or game in this instance) that requires more memory will eventually crash. Using the nsp version is one way to allow for full allocation of the switches memory. I believe this will become more important as the development of more demanding Homebrew grows.

Also I've been told that running nsps, the switch has better/safer read/write handling. Whereas apps run from the "album" are more prone to read/write errors. Which leads to the infamous corruption issues.

For now Fat32 is the solution.

Notshane · Jan 25, 2019

mdmachine said:
It's really something that you don't have to concern yourself much with at this point. But when you run hbml normally (via the album) it only has a certain allocation of memory.
A app (or game in this instance) that requires more memory will eventually crash. Using the nsp version is one way to allow for full allocation of the switches memory. I believe this will become more important as the development of more demanding Homebrew grows.

Also I've been told that running nsps, the switch has better/safer read/write handling. Whereas apps run from the "album" are more prone to read/write errors. Which leads to the infamous corruption issues.

For now Fat32 is the solution.

I knew of the NSP version and its allocation, since I have RetroArch as an NSP for proper Nintendo 64 emulation and am fully aware of the benefits of the superiority those have over loading programs off the Album. I was mainly confused over the "McOsu" thing.

Oh, and the NAND backing up for 6.2 is still going. It has failed a few times and I sometimes noticed, during the later attempts, the bar goes green and it goes back a bit, but after it gets back to where it previously was, it goes white again. I believe it's verifying something.

TheZoc · Jan 25, 2019

Notshane said:
It doesn't work below 4.0 as it is. As I said earlier, it straight up crashes now, even when I go back to 2.1.0 firmware through Choi. So, having it work at all would be nice. Since I don't have the option at all to load games below 4.0, I could care less about updating the GC Slot by this point.

So, as you can see, that's why the choice doesn't matter to me. Also, I can see you're new to this thread, but I mentioned earlier I have two Switchs. One for casual use and the other for homebrew. I don't really know what benefit I get from being able to load games games below 4.0, unless a coldboot exploit is discovered. But even then, I don't mind loading up through auto-RCM all the time.

After all, it's as Reggie said, but it can apply to homebrew as well through a bit of rephrasing. "We believe the easiest way for you to load payloads and have a homebrew experience with Atmosphere is with your mobile phone. It's always there, it's always with you." As long as my phone is with me, auto-RCM is the nicest option I got, I can stick on 5.1 and if my GC Slot updates, I can play Ultimate.

This is what I would do:

Disable "nogc" patch in hekate and in atmosphere and run the firmware.

Just that.

If you want to go the SUPER SAFE route, this is what I'd do:

Revert to your backed up NAND (clean, pristine, no hacks).
Update using ChoiDujourNX to 4.0.0 exFAT (Which is the one I think that has the GC update. 4.1.0 has it for sure, since this is the one I started messing around on my switch), enabling AutoRCM.
BACKUP NAND (this is why it's super safe, second clean NAND backup)
Disable "nogc" patch (This patch disables the gamecart loader, so it isn't ever updated. You want to update, so disable the patch). If I recall correctly, there's a setting for hekate_ipl.ini, and a patch inside atmosphere/, like this:
- Remove line: "kip1patch=nogc" from hekate_ipl.ini
- On atmosphere/BCT.ini, under [stratosphere], force-disable nogc, adding "nogc = 0" there.
Reboot console -> Hekate -> Launch with new settings.

Game card slot should be updated. You can try rebooting once more, and test it with a game that supports firmware 4.0.

If, somehow, something go wrong here (aka: human mistake), you'd have the fuses of 4.0 version (5 burned fuses), which still seems like a good revision to be in. If everything goes correctly, you should have a working GC loader.

This is what I'd do if I were in your position (TBH, I wouldn't even bother with going the super safe way, as long as it never boots without hekate).

I hope this helps!

mdmachine · Jan 25, 2019

Notshane said:
I knew of the NSP version and its allocation, since I have RetroArch as an NSP for proper Nintendo 64 emulation and am fully aware of the benefits of the superiority those have over loading programs off the Album. I was mainly confused over the "McOsu" thing.

Its a rhythm type game, peeps seemed hyped about it, I dont know much. Just an example of that instance.

Notshane said:
Oh, and the NAND backing up for 6.2 is still going. It has failed a few times and I sometimes noticed, during the later attempts, the bar goes green and it goes back a bit, but after it gets back to where it previously was, it goes white again. I believe it's verifying something.

Failures huh? I've done a lot of backups on a lot of units and never had a failure? SD card good?
And yes it does that when it verifies, if i recall correctly.

Notshane · Jan 25, 2019

mdmachine said:
Failures huh? I've done a lot of backups on a lot of units and never had a failure? SD card good?
And yes it does that when it verifies, if i recall correctly.

I've backed up twice on different firmwares before, so I wouldn't think it's failing because I damaged anything. It always says:

Verification failed.
Verification failed.

Below the green bar.

mdmachine · Jan 25, 2019

Hmm... Well obviously its failing the verification process. You using hekate 4.6?
The sectors that got backed up onto the SD are not ending up the same as from the system.
Did you try formatting the card fresh, then running backup?

If I were in your shoes, I'd backup my SD then format the card to fresh ExFat.
Then try making a backup (it will not split it into parts, so long as you have the space for it).
Providing everything went well and it verified, save that backup on the cpu then reformat back to Fat32 and restore the card back.

See if it works that way. If not I'd try another card.
It either got corrupted and needs a fresh format (Ex or 32), or sometimes even good cards, go bad.

Worst case at least you have the Boot 0/1 and rawnand.bin of 2.1.0 and 5.1.0.
But if your system is updated and working and using hekate 4.6, I'd look squarely at the SD card.

TheZoc · Jan 25, 2019

If verification is failing, it's not reading the same data it thinks it wrote. Either the SD card is going bad or there is something wrong the your partition.
I'd advise you to change the SD card asap and do another backup!

Notshane · Jan 25, 2019

TheZoc said:
If verification is failing, it's not reading the same data it thinks it wrote. Either the SD card is going bad or there is something wrong the your partition.
I'd advise you to change the SD card asap and do another backup!

But...I literally just got this card. It can't already be messed up from barely a couple of weeks of use. I should try the exFAT method first, but that'd make me lose a lot of faith in the brand I bought if it messed up that fast.

mdmachine · Jan 25, 2019

It happens, if its a legit SD card and its failing that fast, might be able to get a replacement.
Either way try the exfat method first, could be as simple as the need for a reformat.

That dont work, also try a few things to see.
Make a BOOT 0/1 backup
Then make a SYSTEM backup
Then make a USER backup

See if any of those fail (the most important of them is BOOT and SYSTEM).

BOOT and SYSTEM are much smaller and faster to do.

If its BOOT and/or SYSTEM failing and you have tried another card (keep in mind those 2 are like 2GB total so if you have a smaller card just for quick testing that's fine) try getting 6.2.0 firmware from another source, there is a "bins" place out there, legend has it...

Reflash and try again, as then you have tested all other factors other than your actual partition on the unit thats in question.

Hacking Half-Bricked Switch (Downgraded OS)

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