Question Installing Atmosphere on SX Core (v1 iPatched). Is this the correct way?

Hi all, ready to install the SX Core on my ipatched v1 Switch on FW 10.2.0. The easier way forward would be using the SX OS provided with the modchip however I fear that sometime in the future Team Xecuter will undestandably stop supporting it while Atmosphere is more likely to be kept updated by the community for a lot longer. So, I want to skip SX OS entirely and use a clean OFW sysnand in the internal Switch nand for rare online connections and a CFW emunand in the SD Card running Atmosphere.

From reading many many posts, tutorials and videos I have a sequence below that I'm posting so I can get a confirmation that what I'm doing is correct and I don't end up with a brick (or leave smth important out that cannot be corrected afterwards). I tried to make it as detailed as possible so if anyone posts a mistake/omission or have anything to add please do so. Thanks.


00. Things to do before taking the Switch apart
Check I'm at the latest Switch firmware and the latest SX OS version, Hekate and Atmosphere support it.
Charge up my Switch to 100% as many things will be done off battery in the next steps.
Download at least one digital game from the Nintendo store, any game, just a free one will do.
If I was already using an SD card in my Switch for storage I backup my Nintendo folder in it as it will be reformatted in the next steps.

After all is well with the hardware modding part and I get green light + the boot.dat screen confirming the chip works what do I do?

01. Initial boot into SX OS
I format a large SD card (64GB or more) as exFAT (so I can save nand as one big file instead of many parts)
I copy boot.dat of latest SXOS (v.3.0.5) in root folder of SD Card.
I unzip an SD setup zip file from https://www.sdsetup.com/console?switch also in root (and I get folders like atmosphere, bootloader, config, sept etc)
I copy Hekate (hekate_ctcaer_5.3.3.bin) in root folder of SD Card.
I press power with + held down and in the SX OS menu I select Options -> SX Core -> Cleanup
from Payloads I select Hekate

02. SysNand backup
In there I select Tools -> Backup eMMC -> Backup eMMC Boot0 & Boot1
then after it's finished in that same submenu
-> Backup eMMC RAW GPP (this creates a ~30GB file: rawnand.bin in the SD card)
after it's over I go to Home -> Power Off

I copy all files extracted from Switch (that are in a folder called backup in my SD card) to a safe place on my PC. Even copy them again to an external storage drive as backup.

I shut down Switch and start it with + pushed down along with Power button

03a. Partitioning SD Card in Hekate
in Hekate I go to Tools -> Arch bit
then select -> Partition SD Card
press OK to the first screen that shows the current partition layout and on the following screen I select 29GB at the red emuMMC(RAW) line, the first green HOS(Fat32) line readjusts and leave blue Linux(EXT4) and orange Android(USER) lines to 0GB. I then select Next Step and Start. After it's over I press Close and go to (04).

[or]

03b. Partitioning SD Card in Windows
I create one FAT32 partition in the beginning of the SD Card partition table (where all other files will be stored) leaving 30GB of unpartitioned space at the end so the emuMMC can be stored there in the next step (04). In the large FAT32 partition I copy all the files from that SD setup zip file + SXOX boot.dat.
I press power with + held down and in the SX OS menu I select Options -> SX Core -> Cleanup
from Payloads I select Hekate.

04. Creation of emuMMC/emuNAND
In Hekate from Home I go to emuMMC where emuMMC is disabled (orange) on the left and I go to Create emuMMC on the right and select SD Partition where it will select the one we created before (Part 1) so I press Part 1 and it will do another dump of my NAND in the second partition I created (the 29GB one). After it's done I press close and now I see it's enabled (green) on the left. I then go Home -> Launch and select CFW (EMUMMC) and CFW from the emulated MMC on the SD card loads with Atmosphere modifications.

05. Getting my Console's Unique Keys (optional but hey, it might be useful one day)
I start my Switch up by pressing power with + held down and in the SX OS menu I select Options -> SX Core -> Cleanup
from Payloads I select Hekate (I do not select Lockpick_RCM from the SX OS Payloads directly but from the Hekate Payloads section below).
In Hekate's Payloads I select Lockpick_RCM.bin (it should be already installed in my SD by that SD Setup zip pack). In this program volume buttons navigate lists/menus and power button selects. If asked I select SysNAND (and NOT emuMMC) and if I'm asked to Reboot to Sept I press power or any volume button to do so. Atmosphere appears, Lockpick_RCM restarts and gives me a message that my keys have been saved in /switch/prod.keys of my SD card. Like my NAND backup I save this file on my PC for backup.

Day to day operation
From now on I'm staying in CFW emuMMC, the Switch just goes to sleep when not in use and wakes up in CFW emuMMC. If I need to fully shut it down I'll need to go through the I press power with + held down and in the SX OS menu I select Options -> SX Core -> Cleanup , from Payloads I select Hekate, then in Hekate -> Launch and select CFW (EMUMMC) to get back into Atmosphere CFW. Under no circumstances should I enable Auto-RCM or anything that automatically puts the Switch in RCM mode.
Edit: after I get my latest sigpatches for Atmosphere installed I might get errors when installing via GoldLeaf. What seems to work is the following: I press power with + held down and in the SX OS menu I select Options -> SX Core -> Cleanup , from Payloads I select Hekate, then in Hekate instead of launching emmc from Launch I select Payloads and select fusee-primary. This launches Atmosphere and the sigpatches now work.

Slow glitching at boot: At first you'll see the chip glitch real fast, only pulsing 3-4 times at blue colour before getting to green. After you install latest 3.0.5 SX OS it will take close to a full minute blinking in blue (mine takes around 1 min 15 secs) before turning green. This is NOT an error/problem, let it blink blue until it gets to green (or pink or red if there's a problem). Latest SX OS is turning off the modchip completely so it doesn't waste battery on standby so it keeps no glitching info from previous boots and has to do the "learning" process again.

And some questions I couldn't find answers to:
When I turn Switch on without pushing the + volume button and I have SX Core installed, what happens? Does it just load OFW Sysnand like it would without a modchip?

If for some reason the Switch completely runs out of battery is there some process I should do or do I directly leave it on dock for charging?

I saw some installation tutorials mentioned creating a separate FAT32 partition of around 600MB at the start of the SD card where all programs would reside (Atmosphere, Hekate, SX OS, other Homebrew). I'm guessing this is purely for organizing them separately from games and does not improve compatibility/speed, right?

 

Thanks for your replies, what do you mean by this:

Does this enable a separate emunand with SX OS? So that I can have OFW Sysnand and in the SD one Atmosphere emunand and one SX OS emunand?

 

GREEN LIGHT ON THE FIRST TRY!!!!!

onwards to softmod