Hardware Problem With SD Card Reader Seat From Nintendo Switch Mother Board

[mitcha]

can you refer me to who will do this!? i assume in europe which i am based!

hi , he took it to an informatique/electricien store service , in his town.
you can do the same , if you have a profesional for tiny soldering .
if you want to send it to someone , you need to know how much it will cost you , there is some ppl here who are pro in tiny soldering , do a search.

keep in mind i'm not a pro , i'm like you an amateur at this , and i repair mine with the pictures/diagram here.

 

[linuxares]

hi , he took it to an informatique/electricien store service , in his town.
you can do the same , if you have a profesional for tiny soldering .
if you want to send it to someone , you need to know how much it will cost you , there is some ppl here who are pro in tiny soldering , do a search.

keep in mind i'm not a pro , i'm like you an amateur at this , and i repair mine with the pictures/diagram here.

To be honest, Nintendo should put in a better adapter. A classic old ribbon cable holder is better than these crappy sockets.

 

[mitcha]

To be honest, Nintendo should put in a better adapter. A classic old ribbon cable holder is better than these crappy sockets.

for me it's hard to deal with those ribbon ,who have a black clips to secure the ribbon , i break two of them (little tiny one's from the joycon) they are so small too and you have to be delicate when you clips/lock them.

 

[tomsek68]

I have used pins from a spare Iphone 5s screen. It took a while, but i managed to put the pin in place. It is only an ever-so-slightly longer, but will connect perfectly.

 

[ShadyGame]

So I have these 2 pins missing

Which ones do I have to solder?

 

[mitcha]

So I have these 2 pins missing

Which ones do I have to solder?

look at the 2nd image here in 1st post: https://gbatemp.net/threads/sd-card-port-issue.521485/ your your conector is missing the green and the black ( the ground )

 

[ShadyGame]

look at the 2nd image here in 1st post: https://gbatemp.net/threads/sd-card-port-issue.521485/ your your conector is missing the green and the black ( the ground )

thank you

 

[Shiranui-san]

Got an unpatched 2nd hand Switch which is showing the "Error: cannot intialize the sd card" message after injecting the payload.
Guess I have to open it and check on those connectors?
By the way, SD card is recognised on OFW.

 

[mitcha]

Got an unpatched 2nd hand Switch which is showing the "Error: cannot intialize the sd card" message after injecting the payload.
Guess I have to open it and check on those connectors?
By the way, SD card is recognised on OFW.

hi , instead of opxenning the switch , try verifiying the sd card with hekate , try to backup some files ( boot 1 ...) if it's working , then you missed some files for your CFW to be launch

 

[Shiranui-san]

hi , instead of opxenning the switch , try verifiying the sd card with hekate , try to backup some files ( boot 1 ...) if it's working , then you missed some files for your CFW to be launch

Everything was fine on the SD card.
I opened the Switch and found out that the SD reader connector moves a little bit everytime the SD card is inserted/ejected.
Put some double-side tape under the SD reader to firmly stick it to the console, and some more tape to stick that squared-black-rubbery thing on top of the connetor, and it's working fine now

Good thing I didn't have to solder anything on it, not very skilled on that.

 

[mitcha]

Everything was fine on the SD card.
I opened the Switch and found out that the SD reader connector moves a little bit everytime the SD card is inserted/ejected.
Put some double-side tape under the SD reader to firmly stick it to the console, and some more tape to stick that squared-black-rubbery thing on top of the connetor, and it's working fine now

Good thing I didn't have to solder anything on it, not very skilled on that.

happy ending
you should take a photos of what you did , if it can help others.

 

[megaestman]

I have a launch day switch which had broken pins on the motherboard socket connecting to the sd card reader. After reading this forum (THANK YOU), I found someone to micro solder a new sd card reader to the board itself based on the diagrams here. The reader now works and will again boot into SX OS launch menu. However, once i try to launch into CFW, it now hangs at a black screen. If i reboot, and disable autoRCM, I can launch into OFW. But now when i go into data management in OFW, the console indicates "no sd card inserted". Neither freshly formatted fat32 or exfat cards will register.

So my conclusion is that the card reader works when booting into sxos and then stops when it tries to load CFW or when in OFW. Anyone know why this might be? I'm kind of lost here. I have backup NAND but trying to avoid that route because I DON'T have my game saves backed up because i'm both an idiot and super banned. Any insight or direction is appreciated! I'm on latest firmware 9.2.

 

[mitcha]

I have a launch day switch which had broken pins on the motherboard socket connecting to the sd card reader. After reading this forum (THANK YOU), I found someone to micro solder a new sd card reader to the board itself based on the diagrams here. The reader now works and will again boot into SX OS launch menu. However, once i try to launch into CFW, it now hangs at a black screen. If i reboot, and disable autoRCM, I can launch into OFW. But now when i go into data management in OFW, the console indicates "no sd card inserted". Neither freshly formatted fat32 or exfat cards will register.

So my conclusion is that the card reader works when booting into sxos and then stops when it tries to load CFW or when in OFW. Anyone know why this might be? I'm kind of lost here. I have backup NAND but trying to avoid that route because I DON'T have my game saves backed up because i'm both an idiot and super banned. Any insight or direction is appreciated! I'm on latest firmware 9.2.

not an sx user but here some options :

-is your cfw (sx os) updated cuz your on 9.2 OFW ?

-try booting into hekate to verify if your sd card is detected by backing up some small files or just the verify option of the sd sd card in hekate .

-try another sd card (fat 32 ).

-try with atmosphere cfw , is so don't forget the patch files.

 

[megaestman]

not an sx user but here some options :

-is your cfw (sx os) updated cuz your on 9.2 OFW ?

-try booting into hekate to verify if your sd card is detected by backing up some small files or just the verify option of the sd sd card in hekate .

-try another sd card (fat 32 ).

-try with atmosphere cfw , is so don't forget the patch files.

Thanks for the response.
-My CFW is updated and compatible with 9.2 OFW.
-I assume my card is detected since it boots into sxos launch menu and I have written a backup NAND to the card without problem, but I will try hekate as well.
-tried 3 different cards with both fat32 & exfat formatting (i've been using exfat the entire time)
-I'll give atmosphere a go too.

My only other thought is that I had a brand new card reader soldered on. Wondering if maybe there is something different about the card reader itself that the OFW isn't recognizing. I'd assume it wouldn't recognize on CFW either since it's a modification of OFW and would be looking for same reader device, The card reader looks identical, but who knows.

I'll disassemble the housing later and upload pics of the soldering to see if anyone can see something out of place. Thanks again for the help!

 

[megaestman]

Thanks for the response.
-My CFW is updated and compatible with 9.2 OFW.
-I assume my card is detected since it boots into sxos launch menu and I have written a backup NAND to the card without problem, but I will try hekate as well.
-tried 3 different cards with both fat32 & exfat formatting (i've been using exfat the entire time)
-I'll give atmosphere a go too.

My only other thought is that I had a brand new card reader soldered on. Wondering if maybe there is something different about the card reader itself that the OFW isn't recognizing. I'd assume it wouldn't recognize on CFW either since it's a modification of OFW and would be looking for same reader device, The card reader looks identical, but who knows.

I'll disassemble the housing later and upload pics of the soldering to see if anyone can see something out of place. Thanks again for the help!

Seeing them again, there is some different printing on the newly installed sd reader. Thoughts anyone??

PICS:

 

[mitcha]

here is mine in 1st page #9 post ,it's in the spoiler

there are some difference but like you said perhaps it's just the printing.
where did you buy it ?

edit : i take a closer look at your soldering and i see perhaps the white wire is melted a little bit with the one near him ( not the red wire but in the mother board it self but it touch the other near him )

how many pins were missing ?

edit 2 : i think this is the problem imo , the sd card reader is detected yes, but the wires i think touch's each others, and this lead to mSD card not detected

 

[megaestman]

here is mine in 1st page #9 post ,it's in the spoiler

there are some difference but like you said perhaps it's just the printing.
where did you buy it ?

edit : i take a closer look at your soldering and i see perhaps the white wire is melted a little bit with the one near him ( not the red wire but in the mother board it self but it touch the other near him )

how many pins were missing ?

edit 2 : i think this is the problem imo , the sd card reader is detected yes, but the wires i think touch's each others, and this lead to mSD card not detected

Thanks for taking a look. 4 pins were missing. I wasn't really expecting much when I took it to get fixed. This is a really tiny solder job, and 3 shops wouldn't even attempt to fix it. Maybe I can have those points cleaned up.

I bought the replacement card from an Amazon vendor.

I'm just confused as to why I can load into the sxos root menu from the mSD card and do things like backup NAND to the mSD card. That would indicate it can read/write just fine. But then when loading CFW or OFW I get nothing.

Only other thing I can think of is to maybe try having the original reader soldered back on.

 

[mitcha]

you need an expert on how the nintendo switch boot , to let the backup go well but not booting , maybe post this question on here : https://gbatemp.net/threads/rcm-payload-hekate-ctcaer-mod.502604/page-151
because if i understand well those sequeces are not the same ( backup by just accessing the memory and the booting to FW )

if you are on latest FW 9.2 , give what i told you a try by setting up atmosphere and hekate ( not a big deal just some files to put in the mSD card )

or try (if nothing works ) to "reset factory without deleting save data" option in recovery mode

ps : if you can backup normaly ( with hekate ) it's for sure you can run into CFW ,imo

 

[LittlestCube]

@mitcha I'm actually about to give repairing my reader a try tomorrow, but there's one thing I still really don't understand. How on earth can you tell which points need to be soldered for corresponding missing pins?

 

[mitcha]

@mitcha I'm actually about to give repairing my reader a try tomorrow, but there's one thing I still really don't understand. How on earth can you tell which points need to be soldered for corresponding missing pins?

hi , it's simple : follow the lines on the motherboard for the broken pin's.

or , take a look at #6 post here :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/sd-card-port-issue.521485/

take pictures of your broken's pins before and after soldering , perhaps it will motivate some ppl to do the same , because this issue is known now and sadlly it's a comon issue.

edit : @megaestman have you solved your problem ?
i hope so.