Hacking Hardware HWfly-shaped Picofly boards start shipping in China

[snaker]

After reading your post, I think we should adopt/test with these resistence values based in the switch version, rather than changing them on the ribbons. I suspect that the "official"(100ohm) method tried to use universal resistence values which might not be optimal for every switch version.
@abal1000x what do you think?

On second thought, if it works there might be no need to change the values. I was just hoping to eliminate some of the more common and seemingly random issues encountered until now. This is way over my head anyway

This is the main reason i first stated that :
First of all check if you have slow emmc errors after the installation. If yes (ONLY) then proceed with the following resistor replacement.
But in my case i have replaced to 100 ohms multiple times on these clones in order to work. There is something that all these chinese manufacturers are missing and dont even bother to ask the sellers. They are just resellers and they have no idea how to answer.
The "official" method is much more consistent and the prefered way to do things, but if someone finds those rp2040 clones in their way, you know what to modify.

 

[juanvlc]

Hi! I have recently installed one of these RP2040 HWFly Core boards on a Mariko V2 with Samsung EMMC.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuMhJjZ

It came without preloaded FW, installed 2.73 everything went fine, good solder work and am getting insta boot all times.

Hekate just loads fine but got the EMMC on slow mode while doing the NAND bak which completed successfully two times, but took longer.

It boots with EMMC @400Mhz but after some reads goes into slow mode (backups / benchmark)

Hekate EMMC screens tells me init error counter as 2. No R/W erros and the EMMC goes into slow mode.

Was able to boot HOS just fine but games with the updates installed on the EMMC are crashing almost always.

Do you have any ideas? Defective chip? Badly installed EMMC module on the Pico board?

Am thinking into buying an SX based HWFly which are still available on AliExpress.

Thanks!

Be careful, I found in several units that have a bad design that causes a short between chip and emmc. This can be fixed isolating with tape the chip and emmc module also. This bad desing was fixed in the "new" batch
Also the new batch are poorly finished with emmc socket displaced to the right and the 2 last pins not connected to board and causing " reset not connected" malfunction code
Best regards

 

[abal1000x]

Be careful, I found in several units that have a bad design that causes a short between chip and emmc. This can be fixed isolating with tape the chip and emmc module also. This bad desing was fixed in the "new" batch
Also the new batch are poorly finished with emmc socket displaced to the right and the 2 last pins not connected to board and causing " reset not connected" malfunction code
Best regards

Reset in emmc is not used. CMIIW.

Editted:
Ignore it. I misunderstand. Its the 'reset not connected' error in the firmware.

 

[mlinares]

Be careful, I found in several units that have a bad design that causes a short between chip and emmc. This can be fixed isolating with tape the chip and emmc module also. This bad desing was fixed in the "new" batch
Also the new batch are poorly finished with emmc socket displaced to the right and the 2 last pins not connected to board and causing " reset not connected" malfunction code
Best regards

Thanks for the advise!
These chips seems so unreliable by the moment.
Exactly which parts of the chip/EMMC I must isolate after I change the resistor?
I have put kapton tape over the CPU/DRAM shield already.

Do you recommend me buy an SX Based HWFly instead?

 

[minimanimo]

Be careful, I found in several units that have a bad design that causes a short between chip and emmc. This can be fixed isolating with tape the chip and emmc module also. This bad desing was fixed in the "new" batch
Also the new batch are poorly finished with emmc socket displaced to the right and the 2 last pins not connected to board and causing " reset not connected" malfunction code
Best regards

Hi @juanvlc,

Can you provide more details about this problem and consequences?

I think I have been impacted: old batch (bought 2 months ago) mounted and was booting fine (No SD Card screen) until I've closed the console. Then black screen. Kapton tape was everywhere apart in the middle between Emmc and modchip. I've also bought an EMMC reader mmcblkNX, I was able to fully read the nand so the EMMC is alive (but is useless, as I was not able to reach the step of booting Hereke, so no backups).

I've also opened a topic about that few weeks ago (picture inside): https://gbatemp.net/threads/black-screen-after-closing-switch-with-hwfly-rp2040.636599/

Still finding a solution.
Hope you can save me

 

[juanvlc]

Hi @juanvlc,

Can you provide more details about this problem and consequences?

I think I have been impacted: old batch (bought 2 months ago) mounted and was booting fine (No SD Card screen) until I've closed the console. Then black screen. Kapton tape was everywhere apart in the middle between Emmc and modchip. I've also bought an EMMC reader mmcblkNX, I was able to fully read the nand so the EMMC is alive (but is useless, as I was not able to reach the step of booting Hereke, so no backups).

I've also opened a topic about that few weeks ago (picture inside): https://gbatemp.net/threads/black-screen-after-closing-switch-with-hwfly-rp2040.636599/

Still finding a solution.
Hope you can save me

Sorry, I'm in holidays, not at home and poor phone coverage
Regarding 1st batch hwfly rp2040 core, I noticed this desing fault after installation of several units, doing the emuMMC with back cover closed the console went black screen and restarted. Then noticed when pressing back cover same behaviour occured.
When troubleshooting arrived to conclude that some cap underneath emmc module was causing a short with some component in the chip. I placed some electric tape on the chip and underneath emmc and short fixed
Related to new 2040 plus, found several units with emmc socked bad soldered, socket slightly moved to the right

Hope this helps

 

[shangis]

Hello
What should i do after solder picofly? How to use it? What should i install to get games?
There is someone that can help me with that?

Cheers

 

[minimanimo]

Sorry, I'm in holidays, not at home and poor phone coverage
Regarding 1st batch hwfly rp2040 core, I noticed this desing fault after installation of several units, doing the emuMMC with back cover closed the console went black screen and restarted. Then noticed when pressing back cover same behaviour occured.
When troubleshooting arrived to conclude that some cap underneath emmc module was causing a short with some component in the chip. I placed some electric tape on the chip and underneath emmc and short fixed
Related to new 2040 plus, found several units with emmc socked bad soldered, socket slightly moved to the right

Hope this helps

Do you have any idea what kind of problem, and where, a prolonged pressure short on that caps can create? In my case, with the chip it gave me "*== No eMMC CMD1 request" code, while removing and desoldering everything completely I still have black screen.
Hard to tell if the problem is hardware though, from what I understand it can't launch OFW by putting back Emmc to original slot after a modchip has been installed, because of the change it does on Boot0.
I am trying to figure out if the console is recoverable

 

[Purple_Heart]

I have a problem. I have an oled modded with an Hwfly. If I reboot it it doesnt Boot back on. The led blinks purple/pink and turns off after a while. I have to hard shutdown. I have to wait like 15 min to get it to Boot cause else it doesnt turn on (I guess it doesnt glitch) happens everytime I wanna reboot or if I turn it off and on. How to fix that?

 

[QuiTim]

I have a problem. I have an oled modded with an Hwfly. If I reboot it it doesnt Boot back on. The led blinks purple/pink and turns off after a while. I have to hard shutdown. I have to wait like 15 min to get it to Boot cause else it doesnt turn on (I guess it doesnt glitch) happens everytime I wanna reboot or if I turn it off and on. How to fix that?

Did you have someone do the install? If so send it back.
Otherwise there are a couple of things at play here so first, you have the old firmware flashed and depending on the board you should try to flash 2.73 on it.
This should give you pulsed error codes which are much more accurate instead of the colored ones you are getting now.
The purple/pink light means CMD/CLK problem and this could be because of number of issues one of which is that the mosfet is not getting drained (faulty design of the board maybe) and if it remains open then it does not allow the APU to boot, but once the switch is completly off for a couple of minutes then it works because the current on the mosfet is gone.
Now, you could try to solder a ~33k pull down resistor between source and the gate but only if you understood everything I wrote above and you are sure you know what you are doing.

TLDR; send it to a repair shop

 

[Purple_Heart]

crap.... GBATemp user @Blavla made it for me...... and i cant afford it rn...nor do one of those sh**ty repair shops near me do this.

 

[Blavla]

crap.... GBATemp user @Blavla made it for me...... and i cant afford it rn...nor do one of those sh**ty repair shops near me do this.

Just send it to me . It's the shity dat0 adapter. I will replace it for free

 

[Purple_Heart]

@Blavla ah thsts why ok I will do

 

[shangis]

Hello
What should i do after solder picofly? How to use it? What should i install to get games?
There is someone that can help me with that?

Cheers

Anyone?!!

 

[mlinares]

Ok so in order to help some guys that have problems with those clones. Today arrived some of the new ones called rp2040 PLUS .
The values of the reistors are these :

oled old
point a cmd 47 ohms
point d clk 47 ohms
point c dat0 47 ohms
point b no resistor

oled new
point a cmd 47ohms
point d clk 47 ohms
point c dat0 240 ohms
point b no resistor

v1-v2
point a 50 ohms
point d 50 ohms
point c 330 ohms
point b 50 ohms

lite
point a 50 ohms
point d 50 ohms
point c 240 ohms
point b 50 ohms

instinct-v6
point a 240 ohms
point d 240 ohms
point c 240 ohms
point b 33 kiloohms

From the measurements above we can see:

1) The oled chips dont have resistors at rst point b which i think is good. But we can see that lite and v1-v2 models use 50 ohm resistors at point b which is not recommended.

2) On newer PLUS chips the main difference is the addition of 240 ohm resistors, instead of 47-50 ohms, at c dat0 points.
I dont know if they are influenced from instinct-nx chips which use 240 ohms at all a,d and c points. This also doesnt make a lot of sense since the recommendation is to add 100 ohm resistors at point c dat0.

3)for some reason the v1-v2 clone uses 330 ohms at point c. Even more than 240 ohms which are used at oled and lite rp 2040 clone boards.

First of all check if you have slow emmc errors after the installation. If yes then proceed with the following:

On old oled boards add 2 more 0201 47 ohm resistor at point c and point a as you can see in my picture (or simply replace them with 100 ohm resistors) . First cut the traces and then add the 47 resistors if you dont replace with 100 ohm.

On new oled models replace the 0201 resistors of point a and c with 100 ohm resistors.

On v1-v2 board replace point a and c with 100 ohm 0402 resistors and if it still doesnt work remove the 50ohm point b resistor and bridge the points.

On lite board
replace point a and c with 100 ohm 0201 resistors and if it still doesnt work remove the 50ohm point b resistor and bridge the points.

Hi @snaker
I have been testing today as you said.
Mine came with 240Ohm resistor on DAT0.
Reduced DAT0 and CMD to 100Ohm and init errors changed to RW errors, same behaviour.
Removed RST res. still RW errors aswell.

Tested with 47Ohm on CMD and 100Ohm same error, last test was putting 47Ohm on DAT0/CMD and still getting RW errors. So the last thing I'll try is putting 330Ohm on DAT0 as the new model.

Maybe the chip is just defective. As a hint the exact model is RP2040-NS board with Samsung EMMC.

In any case as the last resort I'll buy an SX based HWFly from AliExpress.

Thanks for your help!

Post automatically merged: Aug 26, 2023

Hi @snaker
I have been testing today as you said.
Mine came with 240Ohm resistor on DAT0.
Reduced DAT0 and CMD to 100Ohm and init errors changed to RW errors, same behaviour.
Removed RST res. still RW errors aswell.

Tested with 47Ohm on CMD and 100Ohm same error, last test was putting 47Ohm on DAT0/CMD and still getting RW errors. So the last thing I'll try is putting 330Ohm on DAT0 as the new model.

Maybe the chip is just defective. As a hint the exact model is RP2040-NS board with Samsung EMMC.

In any case as the last resort I'll buy an SX based HWFly from AliExpress.

Thanks for your help!

Hi again!
The 330Ohm resistor as the Plus model fixed my problem, no more slow EMMC mode, did a successful benchmark on Hekate and a full raw nand backup without errors.
So I guess maybe the Chinese devs put the right value this time.

 

[snaker]

Hi @snaker
I have been testing today as you said.
Mine came with 240Ohm resistor on DAT0.
Reduced DAT0 and CMD to 100Ohm and init errors changed to RW errors, same behaviour.
Removed RST res. still RW errors aswell.

Tested with 47Ohm on CMD and 100Ohm same error, last test was putting 47Ohm on DAT0/CMD and still getting RW errors. So the last thing I'll try is putting 330Ohm on DAT0 as the new model.

Maybe the chip is just defective. As a hint the exact model is RP2040-NS board with Samsung EMMC.

In any case as the last resort I'll buy an SX based HWFly from AliExpress.

Thanks for your help!

Post automatically merged: Aug 26, 2023

Hi again!
The 330Ohm resistor as the Plus model fixed my problem, no more slow EMMC mode, did a successful benchmark on Hekate and a full raw nand backup without errors.
So I guess maybe the Chinese devs put the right value this time.

I cant understand what exaclty is going on. But for me, for example yesterday, i installed a new oled rp 2040 plus on an oled switch and in order to make it work i changed dat0 and cmd to 100 ohms to get rid of the slow emmc errors. It seems that these chips are different for each console.

 

[lightninjay]

Anyone?!!

How 'bout you do as the guide suggests and use google to learn about what a HATS pack is?

https://googlethatforyou.com?q=Nintendo Switch HATS pack Guide

 

[twins333]

I cant understand what exaclty is going on. But for me, for example yesterday, i installed a new oled rp 2040 plus on an oled switch and in order to make it work i changed dat0 and cmd to 100 ohms to get rid of the slow emmc errors. It seems that these chips are different for each console.

I belive they use cloned chips with very high tolerances. This means they need to account for them in some way and they use different resistor values for it. These chips might only work with the ribbons that come in the pack. The resistor values found to work with the regular/official rp2040 mostly do not apply here. Sure, some may work, but it's not a guarantee. I don't think we'll ever find out how these chips work, since the specs are not public and it's really not worth the effort.
With the effort and risk put into these boards to get them working you can easily get a known good rp2040 zero or tiny from waveshare and install it together with the known-good resistors and mosfets. Plus it's cheaper.
However I do understand the appeal of these boards, since they are most certainly easier to install.
Cheers!

 

[snaker]

I belive they use cloned chips with very high tolerances. This means they need to account for them in some way and they use different resistor values for it. These chips might only work with the ribbons that come in the pack. The resistor values found to work with the regular/official rp2040 mostly do not apply here. Sure, some may work, but it's not a guarantee. I don't think we'll ever find out how these chips work, since the specs are not public and it's really not worth the effort.
With the effort and risk put into these boards to get them working you can easily get a known good rp2040 zero or tiny from waveshare and install it together with the known-good resistors and mosfets. Plus it's cheaper.
However I do understand the appeal of these boards, since they are most certainly easier to install.
Cheers!

The only reason of their existence is the clean look compared to the time you invest to the intallation. If you mod lot of consoles you are much faster using these flex cables and chips while keeping the success rate 100% of course.

 

[g.maverick]

The only reason of their existence is the clean look compared to the time you invest to the intallation. If you mod lot of consoles you are much faster using these flex cables and chips while keeping the success rate 100% of course.

Hi Snaker,
Is there any quality concern on the flex cable too? (for the OLED version)
Could I get a random one from Aliexpress?
Thanks.