Hardware A weird Switch demo unit

dotmehdi · Mar 26, 2020

Hello everyone,

So, a long ago when I was working on a phone and consoles repair shop, a client left me a Switch he bought on the french equivalent of craiglist.
The Switch wasn't working when disconnected and booted to an error screen :

I've changed the battery and it was working well, but still showing the error message of course, so I tried different things.

What I did before posting here :
- Hard reset (the recovery menu boots but I can't update the console since the S/N has been banned obivously)
- Tried different payloads, they all works
- Tried launching AMS, ReiNX, SX OS... It boots but I have the same error message
- Dumped the NAND and did a ChoiduJour complete recovery
- Tried launching Atmosphère + uLaunch : it works but I can't access settings with uLaunch and some games aren't working
- Updated the Switch to HOS 9.1 with CDJNX : worked but the Switch still shows me this error message when uLaunch is not installed
- DevMenu for 6.x IS working, and thanks to that I was able to increase the brightness of the screen. But I am unable to turn "Retail demo mode" to off, when I reboot the Switch, it's still On

Some games are working : Stardrew Valley, Portal Knights, Team Sonic Racing, Payday 2, Luigi's Mansion, Mario Odyssey...
Some games are NOT working : Mario Kart 8, Mario Tennis Aces, Untitled Goose Game...

The cartridge reader works (with NxDumpTool for example) but I cant start a gamecard game from uLaunch...
I'd like to get the UI to work, or at least manage to understand why some games refuses to boot..

Any advices ?

Thank you for reading

dotmehdi · Apr 1, 2020

An idea, anyone ?

BORTZ · Apr 1, 2020

If anyone has any ideas they would have posted. Don't bump.

Ericthegreat · Apr 1, 2020

Ask on the atmosphere discord.

ZachyCatGames · Apr 1, 2020

Previous owner probably factory reset it (Edit: or removed the SD card it originally used), which is not a good thing to do on these units.

The only difference between retail and kiosks units is that one extra fuse it burnt, secure monitor checks that fuse and sets a value accordingly. If that value is set to 1/true qlaunch will try to load program ID 0100069000078000 automatically on boot, regardless of whether it’s installed or not, if it’s not installed or fails to run, that’s the error you get.

There are a couple work arounds for both getting it to boot to qlaunch normally, as well as reinstalling RIDM + Demos and using it as a demo console again.

dotmehdi · Apr 30, 2020

ZachyCatGames said:
Previous owner probably factory reset it (Edit: or removed the SD card it originally used), which is not a good thing to do on these units.

The only difference between retail and kiosks units is that one extra fuse it burnt, secure monitor checks that fuse and sets a value accordingly. If that value is set to 1/true qlaunch will try to load program ID 0100069000078000 automatically on boot, regardless of whether it’s installed or not, if it’s not installed or fails to run, that’s the error you get.

There are a couple work arounds for both getting it to boot to qlaunch normally, as well as reinstalling RIDM + Demos and using it as a demo console again.

You were totally right. I have no idea why but I had no notifications about answers on this topic, but by looking for demo units online, I found out about 0100069000078000 and I understood how HOS managed to boot either on retail or kiosk mode, as you said.

The solution I found with someone who has been very helpful on the ReSwitched discord, was to edit the source code of exosphère to disable this burned fuse check at boot. It's currently working very well, but I have to count on someone to compile the files each times Atmosphère gets updated... I tried compiling AMS by myself with Ubuntu + DevkitPro but I always get an error during the compilation.

Maybe on next releases, SciresM will give us an option for exosphère.ini to disable this fuse check !

ZachyCatGames · Apr 30, 2020

dotmehdi said:
You were totally right. I have no idea why but I had no notifications about answers on this topic, but by looking for demo units online, I found out about 0100069000078000 and I understood how HOS managed to boot either on retail or kiosk mode, as you said.

The solution I found with someone who has been very helpful on the ReSwitched discord, was to edit the source code of exosphère to disable this burned fuse check at boot. It's currently working very well, but I have to count on someone to compile the files each times Atmosphère gets updated... I tried compiling AMS by myself with Ubuntu + DevkitPro but I always get an error during the compilation.

Maybe on next releases, SciresM will give us an option for exosphère.ini to disable this fuse check !

Heh. If you ever want to turn it back into a kiosk unit, let me know, I’ve got copies of a bunch of the kiosk stuff with common tickets that can be installed and ran without sigpatches

I’ve got a link that I’m occasionally updating with new builds that have the change, if you want I DM you the link.
As for building AMS yourself, were you using libnx master? AMS almost always depends on changes that aren’t yet in a libnx release. Or building may have just been completely broken at the time (it’s definitely not an uncommon occurrence lol).

I’d be surprised if he added anything /shrug

dotmehdi · Apr 30, 2020

Thank you very much for your help, I'll send you a DM so we can talk about how I can compile if that doesn't bother you

Also, later in the day I'll upload some screenshots of the Switch running HOS, you'll see there are very small differences but maybe that can be useful to someone !

OgroGamer · May 21, 2020

ZachyCatGames said:
There are a couple work arounds for both getting it to boot to qlaunch normally, as well as reinstalling RIDM + Demos and using it as a demo console again.

ZachyCatGames said:
Heh. If you ever want to turn it back into a kiosk unit, let me know, I’ve got copies of a bunch of the kiosk stuff with common tickets that can be installed and ran without sigpatches

I’ve got a link that I’m occasionally updating with new builds that have the change, if you want I DM you the link.
As for building AMS yourself, were you using libnx master? AMS almost always depends on changes that aren’t yet in a libnx release. Or building may have just been completely broken at the time (it’s definitely not an uncommon occurrence lol).

I’d be surprised if he added anything /shrug

I'm interested!
I currently have 3 demo units
the first one in firm 10.0.2 fully operational in demo menu, only 3 games demo,no data in sdcard (full backup nand done)

the second one firm 10.0.2 with the same image error (I suspect bad update)
the last one (which is the first one I got) is currently at 9.0.1 with the same image error (bad update), but working in retail mode with atmos 0.9.4 (thank you very much ZachyCatGames)

I'm really noob, try but I was never able to compile atmosphere by myself

and I feel like it's kind of embarrassing to depend on the kindness of others.
I'm interested in understanding how to recover its demo function in the last 2, apart from being able to alternate between retail and demo (atmos / emunand maybe?)
Thank you

dotmehdi · May 22, 2020

OgroGamer said:
I'm interested!
I currently have 3 demo units
the first one in firm 10.0.2 fully operational in demo menu, only 3 games demo,no data in sdcard (full backup nand done)

View attachment 209886

the second one firm 10.0.2 with the same image error (I suspect bad update)
the last one (which is the first one I got) is currently at 9.0.1 with the same image error (bad update), but working in retail mode with atmos 0.9.4 (thank you very much ZachyCatGames)

View attachment 209887

I'm really noob, try but I was never able to compile atmosphere by myself and I feel like it's kind of embarrassing to depend on the kindness of others.
I'm interested in understanding how to recover its demo function in the last 2, apart from being able to alternate between retail and demo (atmos / emunand maybe?)
Thank you

PM me, I'll help you getting them working

ZachyCatGames · May 22, 2020

dotmehdi said:
PM me, I'll help you getting them working

I already sent them Quest content

. Unless you're referring to the compiling AMS part.

dotmehdi · May 22, 2020

ZachyCatGames said:
I already sent them Quest content . Unless you're referring to the compiling AMS part.

Thank you !!

Well I wanted to share a google drive folder I made for everyone to download the latest AMS build with the modifications for Store Unit Switches (now that I compile them myself

) I don't know if I can share it here or if that's against the rules.

ZachyCatGames · May 22, 2020

dotmehdi said:
Thank you !! Well I wanted to share a google drive folder I made for everyone to download the latest AMS build with the modifications for Store Unit Switches (now that I compile them myself ) I don't know if I can share it here or if that's against the rules.

I'm pretty sure sharing it would be fine

.

ish08kaz · May 27, 2020

A quest cartridge will also restore these kiosk units back to factory without having to mod.

GuitarmanLan · Jul 14, 2020

Hi ! Sorry to bump this thread but I recent got hold of 2 of these kiosk switch units from a Gamestop that closed down. They simply gave them away to the employees lol.

I was able to install cfw through Choidujour but couldn't get it to actually run. I restored the Nand back to its original state and it's functional again as a demo unit but... May I ask the steps for how I can compile atmosphere to disable the fuse check that was mentioned earlier in this thread ?

Thanks so much in advance.

ZachyCatGames · Jul 14, 2020

GuitarmanLan said:
Hi ! Sorry to bump this thread but I recent got hold of 2 of these kiosk switch units from a Gamestop that closed down. They simply gave them away to the employees lol.

I was able to install cfw through Choidujour but couldn't get it to actually run. I restored the Nand back to its original state and it's functional again as a demo unit but... May I ask the steps for how I can compile atmosphere to disable the fuse check that was mentioned earlier in this thread ?

Thanks so much in advance.

Attached a patch to this message, apply it to AMS source code then compile it normally (there's some instructions somewhere on the repo iirc)
I've also attached a pre-built build.

GuitarmanLan · Jul 14, 2020

ZachyCatGames said:
Attached a patch to this message, apply it to AMS source code then compile it normally (there's some instructions somewhere on the repo iirc)
I've also attached a pre-built build.

Wow thank you so much ! I'm going to get started on this tonight and let you know how it turns out

Edit : Was able to get the switch running as a retail unit using the precompiled atmosphere. All of my physical game carts are working fine so that's a huge step up.

I haven't been able to load any homebrew for some reason though. When holding R while loading a retail game, it says software cannot be started. When I go to album, the switch crashes with

Error code - 2144-0001 (0x290)
Program - 0100000000001000
FW: 9.2.0 (atmosphere-0.14.0-master-f71ad5ac-dirty)

ZachyCatGames · Jul 15, 2020

GuitarmanLan said:
I haven't been able to load any homebrew for some reason though. When holding R while loading a retail game, it says software cannot be started. When I go to album, the switch crashes with

Error code - 2144-0001 (0x290)
Program - 0100000000001000
FW: 9.2.0 (atmosphere-0.14.0-master-f71ad5ac-dirty)

Oh, right, forgot to mention, it doesn't come with hbmenu and hbl.
Put this in the Atmosphere folder https://github.com/switchbrew/nx-hbloader/releases/download/v2.3.4/hbl.nsp
Put the "hbmenu.nro" in this zip on the root of the sd card https://github.com/switchbrew/nx-hbmenu/releases/download/v3.3.0/nx-hbmenu_v3.3.0.zip

Strayder · Jul 25, 2020

Hello, thank you very much for the contribution, the compilation of the atmosphere worked for me, I applied the last sigpatch, but I could not make the tinfoil work, I probed the last version of tinfoil and still it did not work. any suggestion please

FanofFans · Jul 25, 2020

BORTZ said:
If anyone has any ideas they would have posted. Don't bump.

You're a nice person.

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