Hacking Hardware Picofly - a HWFLY switch modchip

[Takezo-San]

I spend 30-45 min from opening the shield to soldering two MOSFETs to the APU. This took me 5 minutes. It is a breakthrough!

Then again, an oled will still need the shield to come off because of the clk point. Meh but for the rest it looks good.
Personally will wait for a few weeks for update on post install status of that mosfet type Mod and reliablity issues, if any.

 

[roxzii]

I dont think so, have you tried mounting GPP from ums-loader on PC with DiskGenius? My OLED gpp mount looks like this. Just in case your Blue screen is caused from courted eMMC partitions by DAT0 adapter.(though Hekate should still load even emmc bad IMO)

View attachment 382365

I haven't tried DiskGenius, I just mounted and windows didn't recognize, and did the same with my unpatched one, same result, so I just assumed if it was that windows wouldn't even recognize it as a drive maybe, but this is pure speculation.
As for testing now, it's a no go, knocked both SP1 and SP2 caps off and I'm really having a hard time replacing them, so no payloads until I somehow get that sorted.

 

[deeps]

Here's two easier/safer mosfet positions on the back of the motherboard for the Switch Lite. They're both working fine. I moved the rp2040-zero LED to the home button led while i was at it just to test. Looks pretty neat, but not very useful.
I will personally not be using these points since the added time it takes to remove the motherboard makes it not really worth it for me, but I guess they might be helpful for people with less experience who are afraid of the apu caps.

I believe the big pad super easy position on the back for the OLED that I posted about before should be the standard recommendation though; it is far superior to all other locations (the pads are even pre-tinned!) and the motherboard has to be removed anyway.

 

[RatchetRussian]

Here's two easier/safer mosfet positions on the back of the motherboard for the Switch Lite. They're both working fine. I moved the rp2040-zero LED to the home button led while i was at it just to test. Looks pretty neat, but not very useful.
I will personally not be using these points since the added time it takes to remove the motherboard makes it not really worth it for me, but I guess they might be helpful for people with less experience who are afraid of the apu caps.

I believe the big pad super easy position on the back for the OLED that I posted about before should be the standard recommendation though; it is far superior to all other locations (the pads are even pre-tinned!) and the motherboard has to be removed anyway.

Haha I really like the home button LED idea. Definitely not worth the effort but very cool.

 

[deeps]

Haha I really like the home button LED idea. Definitely not worth the effort but very cool.

 

[RatchetRussian]

I am doing this on my personal lite now. Damn you.

 

[FreeLander]

Then again, an oled will still need the shield to come off because of the clk point. Meh but for the rest it looks good.
Personally will wait for a few weeks for update on post install status of that mosfet type Mod and reliablity issues, if any.

I saw a Chinase guy on YouTube squeezing a tweezer between the shield and APU, scarcthing the via and gettinng a wire in through one of the shield’s mini lock openings. Still amazed to this day.

Fair point, we’ll report back on reliability. This OLED I tried this with is brand new.

Post automatically merged: Jul 9, 2023

Here's two easier/safer mosfet positions on the back of the motherboard for the Switch Lite. They're both working fine. I moved the rp2040-zero LED to the home button led while i was at it just to test. Looks pretty neat, but not very useful.
I will personally not be using these points since the added time it takes to remove the motherboard makes it not really worth it for me, but I guess they might be helpful for people with less experience who are afraid of the apu caps.

I believe the big pad super easy position on the back for the OLED that I posted about before should be the standard recommendation though; it is far superior to all other locations (the pads are even pre-tinned!) and the motherboard has to be removed anyway.

Sorry, I mis-credited this discovery. Amazing. I have a lite coming in tomorrow I thought I’d try this after how much I enjoyed how neat it was on OLEDs, but you’re right. Lites are pretty anonying to dissemble.

 

[Danook28]

There are new update for mosfet soldring on oled motherbord no need to any felx or mosfet on cpu. The mosfet soldring back oled motherbord....

 

[FreeLander]

Random reporting: I always take more time than needed on the CLK point and what works best for me is a grinding pen. My Tweezer scratching always seems to leave something that makes it pretty difficult for solder to stick. .

I put my grinder on the lowest speed, touch it for 2 seconds and next thing I know I got a nice tinned via with a reading within range.

https://aliexpress.com/_m0JDFJa

 

[jkyoho]

I haven't tried DiskGenius, I just mounted and windows didn't recognize, and did the same with my unpatched one, same result, so I just assumed if it was that windows wouldn't even recognize it as a drive maybe, but this is pure speculation.
As for testing now, it's a no go, knocked both SP1 and SP2 caps off and I'm really having a hard time replacing them, so no payloads until I somehow get that sorted.

it's Linux not Windows partition, so they never get recognized on Window.

 

[Takezo-San]

I saw a Chinase guy on YouTube squeezing a tweezer between the shield and APU, scarcthing the via and gettinng a wire in through one of the shield’s mini lock openings. Still amazed to this day.

I'm not even going to pretend I can even do that let alone attempt that. I'd rather take another hour on the install oppose to messing something up and fixing it for 2-3 hours or worse...chasing my tail.

 

[Seco_Gobbo2]

That's normal , install 2.73
Since 2.74 has issue with some rp2040

Many thanks for the reply.

Last doubt, to go back to version 2.73 do I need to use "flash_nuke.uf2" or can I install 2.73 directly over 2.74?

Sorry if the question is silly, but everything I've researched so far doesn't explain how to downgrade picofly.

 

[lightninjay]

Many thanks for the reply.

Last doubt, to go back to version 2.73 do I need to use "flash_nuke.uf2" or can I install 2.73 directly over 2.74?

Sorry if the question is silly, but everything I've researched so far doesn't explain how to downgrade picofly.

When in doubt, nuke it out.

 

[abal1000x]

Then again, an oled will still need the shield to come off because of the clk point. Meh but for the rest it looks good.
Personally will wait for a few weeks for update on post install status of that mosfet type Mod and reliablity issues, if any.

You could take the clk from the emmc too.
The v5 dat0 adapter is the perfect solution, if you could reball
View attachment 382412

 

[Takezo-San]

You could take the clk from the emmc too.
The v5 dat0 adapter is the perfect solution, if you could reball
View attachment 382412

Perfect is a stretch because that adaptor requires 2 reballs and i'd rather not support hwfly if i can help it or wait 2 weeks for it to arrive just for a clk point that I already can do!? Not worth it imo.

 

[abal1000x]

Perfect is a stretch because that adaptor requires 2 reballs and i'd rather not support hwfly if i can help it or wait 2 weeks for it to arrive.

Yes its too pricey, i learn kicad rn, and gonna reverse pcb the adapter.

 

[NooBziN]

Many thanks for the reply.

Last doubt, to go back to version 2.73 do I need to use "flash_nuke.uf2" or can I install 2.73 directly over 2.74?

Sorry if the question is silly, but everything I've researched so far doesn't explain how to downgrade picofly.

to go back, just go to the rollback option, it goes back to the previous recorded version

 

[rsilveira1991]

Hey guys.
I saw now the rollback to 2.73.

Whats the problem with 2.74?

 

[Seco_Gobbo2]

Have you figured this out or at least found a pattern to the instability?

I’m pretty sure I managed to boot my forward back to 2.73. Band things were gravy until I was loading some corrupted cheats on Breeze and got a 2168-0002 error (Atmosphere crashing) then the picofly is not glitching anymore.

The only somewhat reliable pattern I found to getting it to glitch again is waiting 5-6 hours with battery disconnected, then reconnecting after then turning on the switch.

Hello, sorry for the delay in responding.

I haven't had time to do other tests yet.

I think I wasn't very specific in my post, I still haven't installed picofly on my switch, this instability occurs when connecting picofly to the PC.
I had a lot of difficulty finding solid information about installing picofly, one of the videos I saw the technician installed the ".uf2" file on picofly, removed it from the PC and connected it again, then the picofly led turned blue and that's it, on mine it showed all this instability with the led.

The video link.



It is a little old the technician used version 2.66

 

[agus]

Does anyone know where the resistor is on the RP2040 chip for the hwfly model... I want to add a resistor. because I can't enter ofw