Hacking Hardware Picofly - a HWFLY switch modchip

[Asia81]

Hello, I asked a guy on a french marketplace to solder me a picofly on my oled, and he send me some pictures of some of his previous installation he made, what do you think about these? Seems legit, good solder skills?

 

[QuiTim]

Hello, I asked a guy on a french marketplace to solder me a picofly on my oled, and he send me some pictures of some of his previous installation he made, what do you think about these? Seems legit, good solder skills?

If the pics are legit go ahead. It does not get much better than this.

 

[vfrmav]

hey guys, having a hard time finding info on this. OLED with rp2040 hwfly. Finished install and only boots to OFW. checked flashing rellow code and get this
CPU always reach BCT check (no glitch reaction, check mosfet)
but obviously cant find much else after that. Any advice?

 

[Phantomas77]

hey guys, having a hard time finding info on this. OLED with rp2040 hwfly. Finished install and only boots to OFW. checked flashing rellow code and get this
CPU always reach BCT check (no glitch reaction, check mosfet)
but obviously cant find much else after that. Any advice?

Hi there

 

[nclabz86]

i have this R47 resistor
is it 47 ohm ?

 

[QuiTim]

View attachment 405540
i have this R47 resistor
is it 47 ohm ?

No, these are 0.47ohm, you need 47R

 

[nclabz86]

No, these are 0.47ohm, you need 47R

I have tried to install it on my chip, and everything is running normally (with slightly slow booting). Will there be any side effects in the future?

 

[QuiTim]

I have tried to install it on my chip, and everything is running normally (with slightly slow booting). Will there be any side effects in the future?

Well, the resistance on these lines was defined mostly by what rehius had at hand at the time and then by trial and error afterwards. And while i'm no expert on this matter one thing I can think of is that it might lead to emmc corruption in the future if the signal on these lines gets messed up.
Just do a raw backup of emmc and keys just in case you need to restore it.
Then you can leave it like this (with R47) and we will all learn something in tje process

 

[vfrmav]

Hi there

yea, what i meant was are there values or what not that i can check? cause otherwise its as useful as saying check engine.

 

[QuiTim]

yea, what i meant was are there values or what not that i can check? cause otherwise its as useful as saying check engine.

Well not really, it is pointing you directly to the "engine" part that failed which in this case in the Mosfet. If you did the installation yourself then you know exactly where this part is located otherwise it's on soldered in APU directly (bare mosfet or flex cable) or it's in front of pcb (abal's method).
In 98% of the cases with this error you have a wire disconnected from mosfet, 1% bad mosfet and 1% might be something else.
So just go ahead, open the switch and look at the mosfet. If you don't find the issue yourself post some pictures of the installation points and we'll see.
(Attached pictures of mosfet installation)

 

[Phantomas77]

yea, what i meant was are there values or what not that i can check? cause otherwise its as useful as saying check engine.

Well, I'll try to be polite and add my 2 cents to what @QuiTim already explained in detail...

I assume that you're using a flex-cable for the SoC that came with your chip, since you said that you have "RP2040 HWFLY" aka "chinese knock-off sh*t", and even if this topic doesn't cover those chips, here we go.

Assuming that the chip is OK and your flex is soldered well to the SoC caps, then you have a problem with one and/or two MOSFETs. This could be all possibilities which QuiTim said plus another one: the MOSFETs are OK but are poorly soldered to the flex, so you need to fix those joints manually or change flex or directly install the MOSFETs as in the PicoFly guide. If you desolder the flex cable, turn it over and inspect with a microscope if those transistors are well soldered to the flex. As well ensure that there's a good connection by verifying the continuity between flex and MOSFETs by connecting the multimeter's probes on the flex where SoC cap would be connected and directly to the MOSFET Source or Drain pin. Same thing goes for the Gate pin (end of flex and MOSFET G pin).

 

[vfrmav]

reflowed everything with better solder and got it working. seems the A wasnt making good connection. dont know why that would give a mosfet code?

 

[deathnotejacoby]

2layers front trace to the cpu, it is fixable

is these a via next to the Dat0?
I found this picture from a another old thread about dat0 alternative.
I dont really like the way to take the data signal from the balls of the emmc.

Sometime i have bad Dat0 Adapter..

Did anybody try to drill?

 

[Bradle6]

Hello please tell me this is damaged as I have no picture at all. Picofly stars blue goes to white then turns of so I assume that is working but no picture at all on LCD.

 

[QuiTim]

Hello please tell me this is damaged as I have no picture at all. Picofly stars blue goes to white then turns of so I assume that is working but no picture at all on LCD.

You are missing at least 6 pins so yeah, the connector is gone.
You can try the docking station and see if you get a picture on tv.

 

[Vigintiduo]

I noticed that every RP2040-Zero from my last batch is missing a component in the circled spot.
Should I be concerned? They all behave correctly when flashing, still haven't tried them on a Switch.
I bought them from my usual seller on Amazon. Maybe they were like this all along but I just noticed now and I'm being paranoid?

 

[QuiTim]

I think it's by default. None of my RPs had that component attached (25-30pcs)

I noticed that every RP2040-Zero from my last batch is missing a component in the circled spot.
Should I be concerned? They all behave correctly when flashing, still haven't tried them on a Switch.
I bought them from my usual seller on Amazon. Maybe they were like this all along but I just noticed now and I'm being paranoid?

 

[Vigintiduo]

Is there any actual problem with having the two 3.3v caps soldered together on oled Switch? I ended up bridging them and have been trying to remove the solder without success.
However, they're already on the same line, right?
Shouldn't it be fine as long as I don't short the leftmost one with the gnd from the little cap below?

 

[QuiTim]

Is there any actual problem with having the two 3.3v caps soldered together on oled Switch? I ended up bridging them and have been trying to remove the solder without success.
However, they're already on the same line, right?
Shouldn't it be fine as long as I don't short the leftmost one with the gnd from the little cap below?

No problem at all. Previous hwfly flex cables were designed to bridge those big caps intentionaly and there was never an issue with that. Just don't bridge anything else in that region

 

[swensonb]

its been a while....heres my share for this thread i outsourced the thinnest chip that i can find no more adding resistor
just solder.,...the cpu side i used the nx sx flex cable to make work easy and clean too...have a good day

Post automatically merged: Nov 25, 2023

aand another one this one is a NSWITCH V2 same install method i use a cpu flex for easy work make it nice and clean,,,oh and i insulated the jumper pinouts using uv solder mask just to make my connections strong...have a good day guys