If you're updating your sysMMC from 2.3 all the way to 17.0, there are several cartridge reader updates in between. Whether you want to update your cartridge reader or not depends on what is more important to you; the usefulness of being able to play your retail carts on 17.0 or the advantage of not having an updated cartridge reader. And currently, the only reason to not update your cartridge reader is if a future exploit such as an untethered coldboot requires an unupdated cartridge reader. If that prospect is not enticing enough for you, then you don't need to worry about irreversibly updating your cartridge reader. For the most part, a lot of people don't care. In my opinion, I think it makes sense. Even in the hypothetical scenario where a better exploit is released that necessitates the use of a cartridge reader that hasn't been updated, that also assumes you have a cartridge or something similar to make use of the exploit. The most likely scenario would be a specific game that would allow users to load the hack but that would involve buying said game which may even become scarce if such a hack were to be released. Therefore I think its fair to update your cartridge reader. But if you want to retain the ability to load cartridges on lower firmware versions in case a superior exploit is released in the future, then you will have to use the nogc patch to disable the cartridge reader on higher firmware versions in order to prevent it from being updated.Hi again,
I still have one unanswered question, I cannot find a definitive answer even after searching here and googling around. It is about the gamecard reader.
Since I am going to update my clean (hopefully) sysNAND to 17.0.0 (now it sits at 2.3.0) in order to play my legit games and go online, I do not understand if this will *in any way* update my gamecard reader or if there is a way to avoid that. Or anyway if I should even bother with that, also since I will need to be able to read the physical games I have bought
My current situation is: I surely updated it once, when I installed OS 5.x with ReiNX some years ago, in fact now on 2.3.0 it does not work.
I read the table here: https://nh-server.github.io/switch-guide/extras/updating/ and so I believe that there are more updates waiting, but I cannot find any informations about any way to avoid that (i.e. does it upgrade while installing new firmware or the OS itself does it after boot?). Also it would be useful to know, if that was possible, if I could still read gamecards with the latest OS but without updating it.
I hope that my question makes sense
Thank you