Hacking Does SX OS prevent updating game card firmware?

[blaze5]

I've used ReiNX before and I'm aware you can load in the nogc kip from hekate as well to prevent game cart updates but I'd like to use SX OS while maintaining the game cart firmware version after updating with ChoiDujour. From this thread (https://gbatemp.net/threads/sx-os-nogc.515383/) I've seen the answer of no but so far I haven't heard of any cases saying SX OS updated their GC firmware, just don't do it. Even if SX OS doesn't implement the nogc kip directly, it's certainly possible something with their XCI cartridge emulation prevents the game cart firmware update and that's enough for me if that's the case.

In this thread on team xecuter's forum (https://team-xecuter.com/forums/threads/154310-Does-SX-1-4-Ignore-Cartridge-Port-FW-Updates-on-Boot), two people have claimed they have they downgraded back to 3.0.0 and their game carts still work on that FW. It'd be nice to hear a response from team xecuter (either no, they plan on adding nogc, or GC updates are blocked), but has anyone else been able to verify this? I'm not saying to go out and try SX OS with a game cart update pending though unless you really don't care about game cart after downgrading back. Who knows what version of SX OS and Switch firmware (and GC firmware) this will be applicable to if it does prevent GC firmware update. Also could it be possible at some point to chainload hekate with nogc and launch SX OS with the game cart firmware update blocked?

Edit:
Other posts which talk about SX OS updating game cart. I'd like first hand examples of SX OS preventing or updating GC firmware if possible since I haven't seen much either way. I know I can always convert my XCIs to NSPs and use ReiNX or another CFW, but XCIs are safer and I'd like to use the SX OS license I paid for too and be able to downgrade back later if we get coldboot CFW in the future. A working XCI loader on other CFW would work too though and would be the better option. Also it looks like the GC firmware could be downgraded in the future or may not matter with emuNAND. The only reason any of this will matter is if we get a persistent cold boot exploit at some point anyway.
https://gbatemp.net/posts/8259379
https://gbatemp.net/posts/8270330/
https://gbatemp.net/posts/8272373/

 

[jakkal]

This is the longest question I've ever seen.

 

[blaze5]

This is the longest question I've ever seen.

The question is what's in the title. The rest is background explaining that SX OS could be blocking updates with their GC emulation instead of the nogc kip and that some people have reported their GC firmware didn't update with SX OS. I'm looking for some clarity and concrete examples of the GC firmware update occurring or being blocked with SX OS.

 

[Kelly525]

Same @jakkal . I am on 5.1, so mine has been updated already so I cant help answer. Sorry @blaze5

 

[cyfaws]

I went from 3.0.1 to 5.1 using Choidujour. As I understood it at the time (sorry, too long ago to remember where I got the idea) is that the GC is screwed either way and won't work like it should unless you downgrade back to the original firmware version, as the nogc thingy simply disables the reader alltogether in order to preserve the older chip fw version (someone please correct me if I've got that all wrong).

In my case the GC reader most certainly works, which is because I messed up during a boot somewhere along the line, so I decided to just keep booting normally with the SX Pro. The important thing, I think, is that the fuses are still intact, which mine still are. No GC reader could be a nuisance depending on how many original games you have, I suppose, but other than that it's not a big deal I think. Word on the street is that it might be possible to restore the GC reader firmware eventually, so it might not matter either way - and if this fabled exploit does surface and needs 3.x and a functioning cart reader (which would surprise me), well then it might require more creative solutions.

I don't regret for a second leaving 3.x myself. Hope that answers at least some of your concerns.

 

[bundat]

Also could it be possible at some point to chainload hekate with nogc and launch SX OS with the game cart firmware update blocked?

Afaik, currently, only the SX payload is able to launch SX OS, so chainloading from something that supports nogc is not possible.

Because there are conflicting reports on the TX forum, the only real option right now is to try it yourself Although I wouldn't think it's an actual implemented and intended feature, otherwise TX would've bragged about having that feature (like they do with most of their features).

Also, if it's any help, my cart reader works in SX OS. I used the built-in homebrew launcher in SX OS to rip my carts to XCI. I don't even have the hbmenu.nro at all, the only nro files I have on my microSD are WAINCartDumperNX (which I've successfully used in SX OS) and Checkpoint. I'm using pure SX OS to launch them.

So SX OS did NOT auto-disable my gc reader. BUT my fw was 4.1 stock (updated to 5.1 without burning fuses), so I was on cart v2 ever since and was never on cart v1 anyway.

Also here's another link to add to your collection:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/prevent...-or-use-ctcaer-4-0-and-sx-os-question.516771/

 

[smf]

In my case the GC reader most certainly works, which is because I messed up during a boot somewhere along the line, so I decided to just keep booting normally with the SX Pro. The important thing, I think, is that the fuses are still intact, which mine still are.

What do you mean you messed up? If you booted 5.1 without it being patched then as well as the gamecard update, won't you have burnt the fuses too?

 

[cyfaws]

What do you mean you messed up? If you booted 5.1 without it being patched then as well as the gamecard update, won't you have burnt the fuses too?

I meant that once you boot without Hekate, there is no custom kip loading to keep you from upgrading the fw on the card reader. That slipped my mind one day and I booted "normally", as in normally with the SX Pro with AutoRCM and all that

 

[jonnyh585]

ive been waiting three weeks for an answer on this so thank you for your thread

i am on 1.0 with 1 fuse burned, 3.0.1 on choidujour using sx 1.9

im willing to go buy a cart to try this but what cart (from target) am i looking for? any 4.0+?

lets get an answer for this, ive made like 10 reddit threads no answer other than hating on TX so let's get this solved

 

[jonnyh585]

update?

 

[blaze5]

In my case the GC reader most certainly works, which is because I messed up during a boot somewhere along the line, so I decided to just keep booting normally with the SX Pro. The important thing, I think, is that the fuses are still intact, which mine still are. No GC reader could be a nuisance depending on how many original games you have, I suppose, but other than that it's not a big deal I think. Word on the street is that it might be possible to restore the GC reader firmware eventually, so it might not matter either way - and if this fabled exploit does surface and needs 3.x and a functioning cart reader (which would surprise me), well then it might require more creative solutions.

You will not be able to use game cartridges on 3.0.0 if you update your GC software. If you run SX OS while using 4.0.0 or higher, your GC software will be automatically updated.

It might be possible to downgrade the GC in the future, but this is currently impossible.

Honestly, the GC software isn't that important. If you ever do downgrade to 3.0.0, you're probably not going to use its GC software. You will hypothetically use 3.0.0 to boot an up-to-date emuNAND with a functional GC.

I know I've seen the post (GBAtemp, Twitter, or Reddit most likely) from the source talking about a GC downgrade being possible but wouldn't happen for a while (maybe from smea, fincs, sciresm, naehrwert, yellows8 or someone else), but I've looked for it a while tonight and still can't find it. If anyone can post a link to the original source for a GC downgrade I'd appreciate it. I'm not quite sure what I want to do at the moment, but as others have mentioned the cart firmware shouldn't be much of an issue if a persistent 3.0.0 coldboot software method becomes available (with emuNAND or a GC downgrade). I'll either use SX OS now and not care about potentially updating the GC firmware to V2 or use ReiNX with nogc and convert any XCIs to NSP (or the new XCI installer which essentially does the same thing). I found this list of fuse count by firmware version which might be helpful in the future if a lower firmware within your current blown fuse count has an exploit that your NAND backup version doesn't. (https://gist.github.com/jonluca/0d7ce7da7c84de5163be0b49b3e319cc#file-nintendosystemversiontable-csv). I don't know how accurate that is, but if someone has a better source let me know.

ive been waiting three weeks for an answer on this so thank you for your thread

i am on 1.0 with 1 fuse burned, 3.0.1 on choidujour using sx 1.9

im willing to go buy a cart to try this but what cart (from target) am i looking for? any 4.0+?

lets get an answer for this, ive made like 10 reddit threads no answer other than hating on TX so let's get this solved

@jonnyh585 (https://gbatemp.net/threads/list-games-required-firmware-version.485959/)
Here is a list of the firmware versions included in specific game carts if you want to test and revert back to an older NAND afterwards to see if there's something in SX OS with their GC emulation that blocks the updates. Mario Tennis Aces, Octopath Traveler, or Sonic Mania Plus would probably be pretty easy games to find in a store and are also good games, but you can look at the list and see if there's something else you'd want to play or just buy whatever is cheapest. I kind of think it'd be something they'd advertise if they implemented it as a feature with the nogc kip patch to intentionally block GC firmware updates, but they probably don't care about firmware downgrades and one of the selling points is to be able to use SX OS on any firmware so who knows. Cart firmware blocking could just be an unintended consequence of GC emulation or maybe it's not present at all. Any of those games 4.0.0 or higher on that list should work to extract the update data from and use ChoiDujour like you did before. I don't know if it's really worth it since you have a pristine system with 1 blown fuse, but even if the GC firmware does update it would probably only matter if you wanted to sell it and try to cash in on the 1.0.0 firmware since emuNAND or a GC firmware downgrade will probably be available at some point (unlike a 1.0.0 or 3.0.0 persistent coldboot exploit may never be available). If I end up testing this myself, it'll probably be a little while before I get to it.

 

[jonnyh585]

theres no way in hekate to see the update right? you have to downgrade and try a retail cart?

 

[blaze5]

theres no way in hekate to see the update right? you have to downgrade and try a retail cart?

Not that I'm aware of currently like the fuse count output. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to add the cart version firmware number to hekate but I don't think it's built-in to hekate now. That'd certainly be a lot easier to test without having to revert the firmware if the GC firmware version can be pulled from hekate. I'm not sure I've only really used hekate to do a NAND dump and haven't used ChoiDujour yet either, but I think the answer is no. Might be worth adding a request under enhancements on the Github (https://github.com/CTCaer/hekate/issues) and/or asking CTCaer if it would be easy to get that info and compile hekate yourself.

 

[bundat]

I know I've seen the post (GBAtemp, Twitter, or Reddit most likely) from the source talking about a GC downgrade being possible but wouldn't happen for a while (maybe from smea, fincs, sciresm, naehrwert, yellows8 or someone else), but I've looked for it a while tonight and still can't find it. If anyone can post a link to the original source for a GC downgrade I'd appreciate it.

If you click the link in my post above, and scroll to the bottom of that thread down to my post, I quoted CTCaer stating that a GC downgrade might be possible (and you can click the arrow in the quote to go directly to CTCaer's original post). I'm not sure if that's the exact post you're looking for, but it's a post about that topic from a reliable source.

I found this list of fuse count by firmware version which might be helpful in the future if a lower firmware within your current blown fuse count has an exploit that your NAND backup version doesn't. (https://gist.github.com/jonluca/0d7ce7da7c84de5163be0b49b3e319cc#file-nintendosystemversiontable-csv). I don't know how accurate that is, but if someone has a better source let me know.

Seems accurate, compared to this link which I use personally:
http://switchbrew.org/index.php/Fuses#Anti-downgrade

@jonnyh585 (https://gbatemp.net/threads/list-games-required-firmware-version.485959/)
Here is a list of the firmware versions included in specific game carts if you want to test and revert back to an older NAND afterwards to see if there's something in SX OS with their GC emulation that blocks the updates. Mario Tennis Aces, Octopath Traveler, or Sonic Mania Plus would probably be pretty easy games to find in a store and are also good games, but you can look at the list and see if there's something else you'd want to play or just buy whatever is cheapest.

Is he looking for a v2 cart specifically?
I have a trick for listing those... go to nswdb.com and scroll right, then click "Card" twice, so that it sorts by card type (with v2 carts listed first).

 

[blaze5]

If you click the link in my post above, and scroll to the bottom of that thread down to my post, I quoted CTCaer stating that a GC downgrade might be possible (and you can click the arrow in the quote to go directly to CTCaer's original post). I'm not sure if that's the exact post you're looking for, but it's a post about that topic from a reliable source.

Thanks that's perfect. I think I was looking at some different posts by CTCaer before (probably somewhere in the hekate mod thread) but all of your quotes in the thread capture it pretty succinctly.

 

[jonnyh585]

what is the advantage of staying on 1.0 with gc 1.0 firmware?

that maybe in the future a new exploit uses it?

im sick of stressing over this lol, i wanna update to 4.0+ but SX OS makes my life so easy

is there literally any reason why i would want to stay on 3.0.2 and use nogc.kip?

only reason i can think of is if i wanna play smash online on 1.0 after restoring nand, but wont online play require 6.0 or something? any reason to not update gc to 2.0?

 

[blaze5]

what is the advantage of staying on 1.0 with gc 1.0 firmware?

that maybe in the future a new exploit uses it?

im sick of stressing over this lol, i wanna update to 4.0+ but SX OS makes my life so easy

is there literally any reason why i would want to stay on 3.0.2 and use nogc.kip?

only reason i can think of is if i wanna play smash online on 1.0 after restoring nand, but wont online play require 6.0 or something? any reason to not update gc to 2.0?

Downgrading the firmware is really only useful if we get the holy grail persistent cold boot software exploit (which can already be done with internal injector mods) and doesn't provide any other benefits I can think of (except the removed Iwata tribute which you can get with CFW anyway). Nintendo requires the latest firmware to be online anyway, so trying to stick to an older firmware to send less telemetry data to Nintendo wouldn't accomplish anything and would just send them a red flag if you aren't sending them the data they are expecting and you'd get banned anyway. It'd be pretty unlikely the GC firmware would affect said exploit and you'd probably want the latest GC firmware anyway to be able to read the latest cartridges while using emuNAND. If an exploit chain like that comes out emuNAND will become a huge priority. And if it somehow does become important to have the lower GC firmware more people will probably work on implementing the GC firmware downgrade which should be possible. If you wanted to sell a completely stock 1.0.0 system it'd be easier to sell without GC V2 but besides that for you it shouldn't make much of a difference.

First who knows how long if ever we'll have to wait to get persistent software cold boot and if that does happen, GC firmware probably won't matter much anyways. You might as well go ahead and enjoy using it now, just stay offline and you should be fine. I'd be interested in hearing about more people using their own personal legit cart backups with SX OS who haven't gotten banned though.

 

[radicalwookie]

This is the longest question I've ever seen.

At least its a proper question with a well structured sentences and grammar. What more could a temper ask for?

 

[jonnyh585]

Downgrading the firmware is really only useful if we get the holy grail persistent cold boot software exploit (which can already be done with internal injector mods) and doesn't provide any other benefits I can think of (except the removed Iwata tribute which you can get with CFW anyway). Nintendo requires the latest firmware to be online anyway, so trying to stick to an older firmware to send less telemetry data to Nintendo wouldn't accomplish anything and would just send them a red flag if you aren't sending them the data they are expecting and you'd get banned anyway. It'd be pretty unlikely the GC firmware would affect said exploit and you'd probably want the latest GC firmware anyway to be able to read the latest cartridges while using emuNAND. If an exploit chain like that comes out emuNAND will become a huge priority. And if it somehow does become important to have the lower GC firmware more people will probably work on implementing the GC firmware downgrade which should be possible. If you wanted to sell a completely stock 1.0.0 system it'd be easier to sell without GC V2 but besides that for you it shouldn't make much of a difference.

First who knows how long if ever we'll have to wait to get persistent software cold boot and if that does happen, GC firmware probably won't matter much anyways. You might as well go ahead and enjoy using it now, just stay offline and you should be fine. I'd be interested in hearing about more people using their own personal legit cart backups with SX OS who haven't gotten banned though.

thank you! i think its time to upgrade and quit worrying

i do wonder if sx 2.0 will have nogc or kip or what

 

[Deleted User]

If you dont insert a gc then SX OS will prevent card fw updates. If you insert a gc it fallbacks to original behavior which is to update the gc asic if needed.
Also seems it only does this with a legit license. If you dont have a license it will fallback again