You raise a fair point. I haven't taken a look into this issue. Assuming he's telling the truth, he's part of the 1% who got unlucky.
I haven't hacked my Switch but imagine you need to load a payload in order to backup your system.
Thanks for the clarification, hope the RajNX's thread can be reopened, @rajkosto is doing a nice progress on it with some cool patches and customization. Thanks @evilsperm, can't wait to order one of your SwitchME dongles...So
I want to apologize to @rajkosto
I have looked at his code base and nothing pointed to any hardware registers being muffed.
That being said, again sorry my dude I thought we were going to have another ps3 brick fest. Thankfully we will not!
Well not due to your CFW anyway
Seeing this happened out of nowhere and it really was perfectly lined up for me to think it was the fault of the CFW.
It was not, I have however followed the rabbit hole down as far as it can go, and have come out the other side
I reproduced the brick on a brand new console.
I did not install SwithME, trinket, or use the SwitchME external dongle. So we could take that out of the equation.
I tested with all CFW, and OFW (5.1) and every payload under the sun just because I wanted to be sure.
Again CFW or Payload are ruled out (for these particular switch(s) anyway but don't get it twisted bad CFW or a bad nca can 100% brick your system)
When the new system died it was booted in OFW with Zelda booted up.
I booted up OFW and CFW about 40-50 times. I started to notice some weird things going in both OFW and CFW.
At one point I had to keep plugging and unplugging the console into the dock 10-20 times very fast to get it to power back on because it was showing signs of a bricked
Charge controller IC. This happened in both CFW and OFW, it was just being random.
So lets travel down the path of wtf went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.
But first I want to say Nintendo has a VERY poor design at power management, it was just poorly thought out and execution even worse.
After ripping apart the burnt up switches and testing everything I found it very odd that both switches got burnt up exactly the same.
Charge Controller IC is bad.
Using official docks they came with same goes for the power cords.
Tore down the docks and tested them as well. I found no issue within the docks themselves (more on this later)
So after a few hours of racking my brain on what could have possibly gone wrong and tracking every lead back I found the issue.
I happened to plug in my cellphone charger into the outlet where the switch is plugged in. My phone said charging slowly and only showing 192ma
So flip the USB C cable in the phone and all of a sudden it spikes to 2200mA!
I figure OK this is a fast charger so that should be ok.
...but its not!
My phone should not be getting over 1940mA EVER.
I unplug the phone charger again and plug it back in. Showing 1730mA, flip the USB C and getting 340mA
So now I suspect its the power outlet (a usb combo unit).
I tare down the outlet and start to probe it. Nothing is visible to the eye, nothing smells or looks burnt.
So I wire it back in for further testing. I now see off of one of the regulators the power is fluctuating, its very minor but its enough to get me worried.
I plug in my phone charger again connect my phone and there we have it. I see 2200mA again.
So I start to test the circuit in the outlet, its pulsing current (never a good sign)
so I unplug everything and remove the socket for fear of it starting a fire.
So after testing what I have learned is that the power outlet I have in my wall is a piece of trash, it has failed very insidiously.
It could have been a failure of the controller IC in the outlet itself. I really don't want to dig any deeper and see why the outlet failed because I know it failed and that's good enough. Also I'm pretty sure it has been failing for a while but finally came to a head when the switch couldn't deal with repeated amprage pulses.
I watched the draw on the outlet load and release, sometimes it was rapid and sometimes it took a few minutes.
The only explanation I can come up with for why the the switch drops dead and my phone, laptop, or anything else I plug in doesn't die in a fire, is that every device is actually built to handle amperage fluctuations. Be it 100mA or 1000mA usually they will build in a cutoff or a fuse. We all know nintendo didn't want to spend $0.00007 for the 56k Ohm caps that should have been placed on the usb port for usb C standards. So who knows what else they skimped on or didn't have the foresight to test before releasing their hardware.
So in closing, don't plug your switch into an outlet that has an IC switching system (combo usb outlet)
You haz been warned
Again sorry Raj
I'm glad that this issue has been solved. Thanks to your investigation, we know to be wary of more than just 3rd party docks. Hopefully Nintendo fixes the problems with their USB ports during their next Switch revision....So
I want to apologize to @rajkosto
I have looked at his code base and nothing pointed to any hardware registers being muffed.
That being said, again sorry my dude I thought we were going to have another ps3 brick fest. Thankfully we will not!
Well not due to your CFW anyway
Seeing this happened out of nowhere and it really was perfectly lined up for me to think it was the fault of the CFW.
It was not, I have however followed the rabbit hole down as far as it can go, and have come out the other side
I reproduced the brick on a brand new console.
I did not install SwithME, trinket, or use the SwitchME external dongle. So we could take that out of the equation.
I tested with all CFW, and OFW (5.1) and every payload under the sun just because I wanted to be sure.
Again CFW or Payload are ruled out (for these particular switch(s) anyway but don't get it twisted bad CFW or a bad nca can 100% brick your system)
When the new system died it was booted in OFW with Zelda booted up.
I booted up OFW and CFW about 40-50 times. I started to notice some weird things going in both OFW and CFW.
At one point I had to keep plugging and unplugging the console into the dock 10-20 times very fast to get it to power back on because it was showing signs of a bricked
Charge controller IC. This happened in both CFW and OFW, it was just being random.
So lets travel down the path of wtf went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.
But first I want to say Nintendo has a VERY poor design at power management, it was just poorly thought out and execution even worse.
After ripping apart the burnt up switches and testing everything I found it very odd that both switches got burnt up exactly the same.
Charge Controller IC is bad.
Using official docks they came with same goes for the power cords.
Tore down the docks and tested them as well. I found no issue within the docks themselves (more on this later)
So after a few hours of racking my brain on what could have possibly gone wrong and tracking every lead back I found the issue.
I happened to plug in my cellphone charger into the outlet where the switch is plugged in. My phone said charging slowly and only showing 192ma
So flip the USB C cable in the phone and all of a sudden it spikes to 2200mA!
I figure OK this is a fast charger so that should be ok.
...but its not!
My phone should not be getting over 1940mA EVER.
I unplug the phone charger again and plug it back in. Showing 1730mA, flip the USB C and getting 340mA
So now I suspect its the power outlet (a usb combo unit).
I tare down the outlet and start to probe it. Nothing is visible to the eye, nothing smells or looks burnt.
So I wire it back in for further testing. I now see off of one of the regulators the power is fluctuating, its very minor but its enough to get me worried.
I plug in my phone charger again connect my phone and there we have it. I see 2200mA again.
So I start to test the circuit in the outlet, its pulsing current (never a good sign)
so I unplug everything and remove the socket for fear of it starting a fire.
So after testing what I have learned is that the power outlet I have in my wall is a piece of trash, it has failed very insidiously.
It could have been a failure of the controller IC in the outlet itself. I really don't want to dig any deeper and see why the outlet failed because I know it failed and that's good enough. Also I'm pretty sure it has been failing for a while but finally came to a head when the switch couldn't deal with repeated amprage pulses.
I watched the draw on the outlet load and release, sometimes it was rapid and sometimes it took a few minutes.
The only explanation I can come up with for why the the switch drops dead and my phone, laptop, or anything else I plug in doesn't die in a fire, is that every device is actually built to handle amperage fluctuations. Be it 100mA or 1000mA usually they will build in a cutoff or a fuse. We all know nintendo didn't want to spend $0.00007 for the 56k Ohm caps that should have been placed on the usb port for usb C standards. So who knows what else they skimped on or didn't have the foresight to test before releasing their hardware.
So in closing, don't plug your switch into an outlet that has an IC switching system (combo usb outlet)
You haz been warned
Again sorry Raj
This post is a detailed writeup of the protocol errors noticed on the +Nintendo Switch.
Good news: the +Innergie / +InnergieEurope / +Delta Electronics 45w charger is robust and works to power both the Switch and Switch Dock!
Bad news: the Nintendo Switch and Dock are chock full of USB-C protocol errors and flaws. See the attached.
Although long in tooth, the Innergie is one of the few chargers that will actually properly power the Nintendo Switch and Dock. It is a USB-PD "v1.0" supply -- meaning it was designed around the 5v/12v/20v levels. (12v was split to 9v/15v in "v2.0".)
However, because it was USB-C compliant (followed the darn spec) and robustly engineered, it will work with the Switch even though it came out nearly two years before the Switch was released. (Hooray!) Innergie had the foresight to add 15v as an "optional and extra" voltage level and now it reaps the rewards. (It also has $3k $1mil in connected device insurance, so I can recommend it.)
I've attached traffic logs highlighting the multiple errors in the Switch. I first tested the PSU side of the dock, then INSIDE the dock (Switch side of the dock), then on the Switch alone.
Issues noted:
[PSU side of dock:]
* This is more of a quirk, but the Switch (and Dock) always request 0.5a before upgrading to the full amperage. However, this behavior is buggy and causes problems. (See below.)
* The dock doesn't listen to the charger. The charger says "I can't do Dual-Role Data", but the dock ignores that and tries a DR_SWAP anyway. ("50 DKP minus.")
* The dock does not properly discharge Vbus to vSafe0v within the set time. Although this isn't strictly necessary since the dock's external port isn't Dual-Role Power, it means there is excessive capacitance in the Vbus line. This is strictly regulated in the Type-C spec.
* The dock does not respond properly to DISC_ID requests from its port partner.
[Switch side of the dock:]
This is a bit of a mess.
* (1a) The dock tells the Switch it is Dual-Role Power capable on the internal port. Meaning it is claiming the Switch tablet can theoretically power the dock itself, backwards! I don't know if this is a future planned addon for the Switch or not, but ....
* (1b) ... in the Alternate Mode Adapter product descriptor (more on this later) it claims it does not need Vbus to operate. These two points (1a) and (1b) are contradictory. (Perhaps it switches the flag as necessary?)
* (2) The dock "neuters" the USB-PD advertisements from the AC adapter. It only passes through the 5v and 15v levels. This just seems like poor future planning, especially since the Switch itself can accept multiple input voltages. Also, this means the dock passthrough is not Power Rules compliant.
* (3a) The dock remembers to "subtract" some amperage from the 5v level (3a to 0.5a) to account for its own power use, like most other hubs. (Or, it only leaves a stub since 5v/0.1a is mandatory for "error message" signaling with USB-PD.) However, it forgets to deduct the same wattage from the 15v level! (15v/3a from the Innergie 45w should be reduced to around 15v/2.4a. The Switch 39w PSUs 15v/2.6a should be reduced to around 15v/2.0a.)
* (3b) The Switch tablet is a power hog! Its maximum draw should be 2.6a, yet it hogs the whole 3.0a from the adapter. (This is similar to the bad behavior the +Made by Google Pixel phone had -- it only needs 9v/2a=18w max, but it hogged 9v/3a=27w.)
* (4a) The Switch and Dock use a proprietary "Nintendo AltMode". This is fine. However, what's not fine is jumping the gun and entering the AltMode before even querying the Dock via a DISCover_SVID probe to see if it supports it!
* (4b) The DISC_SVID probe exposing DisplayPort and "Nintendo" AltModes appears after the entry at (4a). This is bad because it means the Switch is assuming the presence of the AltMode merely because of the USB VID and PID in the DISC_ID above! This strongly hints the motivation was DRM, vendor-lockout, and shows poor consideration of forwards-compatibility. (Remember, Nintendo may release a different dock in the future... with different USB VID and PID! Hardcoding it is a bad idea, and instead it should rely on USB-PD commands to do it.)
* (5) The Switch tablet itself also has the excess capacitance on Vbus and vSafe0v time problem the dock has. This is a much greater concern since it is a "Dual-Role Power" device. (It can accept power or give power.) This vSafe0v delay problem causes significant Power-Role Swap issues with safe, compliant hardware that correctly checks for 0v before swapping power. It can take up to 2 minutes for the Switch to naturally discharge Vbus.
* (6) When the Switch finally does issue a DISC_SVID, and the dock replies, the dock messes up the reply. When you respond to a DISC_SVID request, you are supposed to "terminate" and pad the VDO message with "0000" (or "0000 0000"). Nintendo completely forgot to do that here, and tells me their chipset is bad. This noncompliant behavior means even third-party docks will have to emulate this wrong behavior to work.... which is bad for everyone, especially the ecosystem. (Race to the bottom for "compatibility".)
[Switch itself:]
* The Switch tablet always requests 0.5a before moving on to the full amperage. I don't know why it does this. Especially since this behavior causes major errors with the Switch if the charger does a SRC_CAP re-advertisement, as mentioned in my previous post.
* The Switch doesn't listen to the charger. (Yes, this is the same as the dock.) The charger says "I can't do Dual-Role Data", but the Switch ignores that and tries a DR_SWAP anyway. ("100 DKP minus.")
* The Switch does not respond properly to DISC_ID requests from its port partner.
[Interesting notes from decoding the Dock DISC_ID command:]
* The dock claims to be a dongle! No joke. "Alternate Mode Adapter". All this means it is a USB-PD device that supports AlternateModes, and there is no "cable" in-between it and the device. (No SOP'.) It also suggests there are few obstacles to using a plain-jane USB-C-over-DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter as a mobile dock. (There were no heatsinks or fans in the dock itself, to my observation. So I don't see why not.) I hope it may be possible to hook up a Switch directly to a USB-C monitor that has >39w USB-PD and DisplayPort. (I need to test this.)
[More notes:]
* Certain chargers crash the Switch and Dock outright. (87w Apple.)
* Only 2 adapters I tested work. (The Innergie is one, I hesitate to name the other due to other flaws.)
* If your Switch bugs out, it will refuse to charge with anything until it is hard-rebooted.
* Most (80%) of chargers cause the dock to hard-crash. Instead of (properly) negotiating a 5v/0.1a "error message" to the Switch, the charge controller in the dock locks up and does not negotiate with the Switch at all.
* The Switch and dock do not properly use the CAP_MISMATCH flag. Rather, they don't use it at all. This seems like the greatest oversight, since that's specifically why it's there. USB-PD has a requirement for flashing an error LED, or displaying an error, if there is a power problem. That's what the CAP_MISMATCH bit in a REQUEST is for.
This has been a bit of a long-winded post, but it helps explain A LOT of the problems I've heard about. Hopefully Nintendo takes this post seriously and addresses these issues before ramping up production, per their recent notice. Some of these issues are chipset- and hardware- level, meaning they can only be fixed via a hardware revision ASAP.
It's really, really hard to fix a problem after you've shipped a product. Given their recent notice, it seems it may muddy the waters of the USB-C ecosystem quite severely if left unchecked. And once again, I'm just a freelance volunteer engineer doing this testing -- dedicated teams should be the ones to look at this and implement it correctly.
That's just begging for a brick.
NP@evilsperm Just wanted to say thank you for digging into this, and concluding that the brick wasn't caused by any specific CFW
I was using the nintnedo wart. The failure point on this was the actual wall outlet (inside the wall)
My post isn't really supposed to be an all in one guide on how to avoid bricks. It's more geared towards telling people how to handle an unfixable brick. I feel that mentioning the controversy is necessary as it's the perfect cautionary tale for this situation. One person's finger pointing just caused an entire shitstorm. The post was made to tell people an alternative to the finger pointing. I'm just glad it ended well. Those involved admitted to their mistakes and decided to get to the bottom of things.
It is absolutely nuts that after considering the seemingly more likely causes of modding or the CFW, the actual cause was the flippin' power outlet. Woulda thought?
@
Skelletonike:
