Hacking Hardware Mariko switch with Picofly not booting past Switch logo

[MertX2]

Originally this switch had an Hwfly RP2040 Modchip and it worked fine for a bit when it suddenly caused slow emmc and read/write errors. Then, the switch no longer booted past the Nintendo Switch logo, both on ofw (on ofw the screen dims after sometime but still stays at the logo) and sysnand cfw. Online it was said that maybe the wifi chip could be broken so I booted L4T Ubuntu and the Wifi chip still seemed to work(connected to wifi, played youtube etc.). I then replaced the Hwfly RP2040 with a standard RP2040 Zero install. Then I saw that maybe the emmc got corrupted so I made a nand backup along with prod.keys and BOOT0 and BOOT1 and proceeded with suchmememanyskill's unbrick guide to no avail, switch still did not boot. Afterwards I tried creating an emuNand to see if it would boot from there (still didn't), ran the system and boot.bis restore on the emuNand (still no luck) and eventually gave up which is why I'm now seeking your help. I think maybe it's another hardware issue somewhere on the board, because even if the emmc would be completely dead a restored emuNand should still be able to boot right?

I have the latest atmosphere, hekate and sigpatches, 256gb Fat32 sd card, partition based emuNand.

 

[Hassal]

You made backup after you got axed? That backup won't do you any good.
Your first step if you cannot boot is to check your partitions if they are all present then you start the recovery process based on what got corrupted. Though even with corrupt eMMC you should still be able to boot into emuNAND assuming that one didn't get corrupted as well.

 

[MertX2]

Yeah should have prolly made a backup immediately, but atleast I got my saves, prodinfo, keys etc. I already went through the switch unbrick guide but it didn't help and even the emuNand wont boot no matter what, always hangs at nintendo switch logo or black screens after atmosphere logo

EDIT: At some point the GPP User partition table also got emptied for seemingly no reason after which I restored the backup to get the partitions back

 

[Hassal]

You can try recovery using maintenance mode. If your backup partitions are intact you should be able to recover the damaged partition.

 

[MertX2]

So now I tried to manually restore the partitions on emuNand with NxNandManager through hekates UMS and I atleast got a atmosphere crash screen now!

According to switchbrew, the crashed title is the ETicket Service or es.

Post automatically merged: Aug 20, 2023

You can try recovery using maintenance mode. If your backup partitions are intact you should be able to recover the damaged partition.

Wouldn't boot into maintenance mode before, will try now

Post automatically merged: Aug 20, 2023

Maintenance mode still wouldnt start but...
ITS WORKING AGAIN!
So while restoring everything with NxNandManager I used a donor Prodinfo from sthetix which led to this crash screen so I thought why not replace it with my own? And now it booted back into the setup(because I wiped the user partition on the emuNand) Success! Allthough I still dont know if the emmc is borked or not, will have to test that!

 

[superxoi]

Originally this switch had an Hwfly RP2040 Modchip and it worked fine for a bit when it suddenly caused slow emmc and read/write errors. Then, the switch no longer booted past the Nintendo Switch logo, both on ofw (on ofw the screen dims after sometime but still stays at the logo) and sysnand cfw. Online it was said that maybe the wifi chip could be broken so I booted L4T Ubuntu and the Wifi chip still seemed to work(connected to wifi, played youtube etc.). I then replaced the Hwfly RP2040 with a standard RP2040 Zero install. Then I saw that maybe the emmc got corrupted so I made a nand backup along with prod.keys and BOOT0 and BOOT1 and proceeded with suchmememanyskill's unbrick guide to no avail, switch still did not boot. Afterwards I tried creating an emuNand to see if it would boot from there (still didn't), ran the system and boot.bis restore on the emuNand (still no luck) and eventually gave up which is why I'm now seeking your help. I think maybe it's another hardware issue somewhere on the board, because even if the emmc would be completely dead a restored emuNand should still be able to boot right?

I have the latest atmosphere, hekate and sigpatches, 256gb Fat32 sd card, partition based emuNand.

the "not past the nintendo logo" is the problem with solder sp1 sp2 ,i had this problem before after checking the solder point my sp1 had 1 loose point so i soldered it again and it work. as for the slow emmc if you are using v1,v2 check the shield which is contacted directly to the fbga. making sure you cut the shield neatly so that the shield would not forced too much on the chip itself , i had this problem once too.

 

[MertX2]

Nope, problem was entirely with the HWFLY RP2040 "clone" because that basically puts itself between the emmc and the switch which is why it worked flawlessly aftee doing a bog standard picofly install with the cpu flex cable still untouched