Hardware Hacking Switch OLED 256gb NAND upgrade

[zal16]

I have a Switch OLED with sx core (spacecraft 0.2 firmware)
I want to upgrade the NAND from 64GB to a biggest 256GB
I already have a 64GB NAND backup.

To perform this upgrade, i just need to dessolder the old chip, solder back the new blank one, restore the backup and resize user partition?

The sx core works with a blank eMMC?

 

[Purple_Heart]

i doubt anyone did it to a OLED one till now

 

[zal16]

My major doubt is the possibility of sx core handle the glitch with a blank eMMC

 

[Hayato213]

No idea never heard of anyone with a 256GB NAND on an OLED model.

 

[zal16]

And in an regular mariko console?

No idea never heard of anyone with a 256GB NAND on an OLED model.

 

[Hayato213]

And in an regular mariko console?

If you can boot up modified hekate without the emmc then you can probably do it

 

[zal16]

If you can boot up modified hekate without the emmc then you can probably do it

The sx core need the presence of eMMC (or the presence of some data on her) in order to boot hekate?

 

[Hayato213]

The sx core need the presence of eMMC (or the presence of some data on her) in order to boot hekate?

No idea I don't own a core or hwfly or a modded oled, only V1 with Trinket M0.

 

[hippy dave]

There should be a way to make/adapt a flash memory reader to copy data from the old chip to the new one, readers exist for the v1 emmc boards so it'd probably just be about getting the wiring right.

 

[zal16]

There should be a way to make/adapt a flash memory reader to copy data from the old chip to the new one, readers exist for the v1 emmc boards so it'd probably just be about getting the wiring right.

The problem with adapters is the inhability to access the eMMC boot partitions

 

[binkinator]

I have a Switch OLED with sx core (spacecraft 0.2 firmware)
I want to upgrade the NAND from 64GB to a biggest 256GB
I already have a 64GB NAND backup.

To perform this upgrade, i just need to dessolder the old chip, solder back the new blank one, restore the backup and resize user partition?

The sx core works with a blank eMMC?

I seriously considered this upgrade in my V1 until I started thinking of the practicality of it all.

• From what I understand EMMC is about the same speed as an SD Card…just more expensive ($130 from AliX vs $30 from Amazon.)
• Moving forward your emunand and backups will (initially) be 256G so overall just slower to manipulate.
• I don’t use my Sysnand to store anything and if I ran out of space…just swap out a $30 card and be done.
• There is still another TB on the SD card roadmap (V1 can address up to 2 TB) so the upgrade path still has some room to grow.

Honest question, aside from “cause I can” (and I totally get it if that’s the reason) why would you want to do this?

edit:

from my initial research I was just going to restore a backup and then expand the drive just like you said…

Found the guide I was referencing: https://web.archive.org/web/20190310080832/http://www.nathanbunn.com/NandUpgradeSteps/

 

[zal16]

I seriously considered this upgrade in my V1 until I started thinking of the practicality of it all.

• From what I understand EMMC is about the same speed as an SD Card…just more expensive ($130 from AliX vs $30 from Amazon.)
• Moving forward your emunand and backups will (initially) be 256G so overall just slower to manipulate.
• I don’t use my Sysnand to store anything and if I ran out of space…just swap out a $30 card and be done.
• There is still another TB on the SD card roadmap (V1 can address up to 2 TB) so the upgrade path still has some room to grow.

Honest question, aside from “cause I can” (and I totally get it if that’s the reason) why would you want to do this?

edit:

from my initial research I was just going to restore a backup and then expand the drive just like you said…

Found the guide I was referencing: https://web.archive.org/web/20190310080832/http://www.nathanbunn.com/NandUpgradeSteps/

I just want to maximize the console's capabilities. I already have a 1TB micro SD installed, but I want to maximize the internal memory too, as it is slightly faster and there are no more investments (UFS is the future) in capacities greater than 256GB (which constitutes a definitive upgrade). If one day a 2TB micro SD comes along, I won't hesitate to buy it (as long as it's not at stratospheric prices, of course)

 

[binkinator]

I just want to maximize the console's capabilities. I already have a 1TB micro SD installed, but I want to maximize the internal memory too, as it is slightly faster and there are no more investments (UFS is the future) in capacities greater than 256GB (which constitutes a definitive upgrade). If one day a 2TB micro SD comes along, I won't hesitate to buy it (as long as it's not at stratospheric prices, of course)

Appreciate the response. This is how muscle cars were born. Good luck with your maxed out Switch!

 

[Terrorize420]

I have a Switch OLED with sx core (spacecraft 0.2 firmware)
I want to upgrade the NAND from 64GB to a biggest 256GB
I already have a 64GB NAND backup.

To perform this upgrade, i just need to dessolder the old chip, solder back the new blank one, restore the backup and resize user partition?

The sx core works with a blank eMMC?

I did it to my V1 switch but when i was going to do it to my v2 switch the problem was you need to dump BIS keys for eMMC contents decryption and the last version doesn’t work on v2 switches heres the guide I used worked great on v1 switch

https://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html

 

[binkinator]

I did it to my V1 switch but when i was going to do it to my v2 switch the problem was you need to dump BIS keys for eMMC contents decryption and the last version doesn’t work on v2 switches heres the guide I used worked great on v1 switch

https://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html

The dude I linked based his guide on this one. Good guide!

Link to it for the future: https://web.archive.org/web/20190324224019/http://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html

 

[zal16]

I did it to my V1 switch but when i was going to do it to my v2 switch the problem was you need to dump BIS keys for eMMC contents decryption and the last version doesn’t work on v2 switches heres the guide I used worked great on v1 switch

https://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html

biskeydump is very outdated, but the lockpick RCM extracts the BIS keys and works with V2 and Aula (OLED) too.

The main problem is this forked version of Hekate os very outdated too. The advantage over CTCaer version is it removes the eMMC dump size check. I'm not sure if the recent CTCaer versions removes this check too.

 

[zal16]

The dude I linked based his guide on this one. Good guide!

Link to it for the future: https://web.archive.org/web/20190324224019/http://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html

this guide may even work for my case, but adaptations would be necessary for it to work.
The first thing is to know what is necessary to have previously written in the new NAND for the sx core to work. I can still write Rawnand.bin on the new chip, using a simple microSD to USB adapter, but boot0/1.bin I don't know how to write, since they are in the eMMC boot area, inaccessible by the aforementioned SD>USB method above.

If I was sure that the sx core would glitch, even with boot0/1 blank, I could write them by Hekate himself, in the eMMC restore tab.

 

[binkinator]

this guide may even work for my case, but adaptations would be necessary for it to work.
The first thing is to know what is necessary to have previously written in the new NAND for the sx core to work. I can still write Rawnand.bin on the new chip, using a simple microSD to USB adapter, but boot0/1.bin I don't know how to write, since they are in the eMMC boot area, inaccessible by the aforementioned SD>USB method above.

If I was sure that the sx core would glitch, even with boot0/1 blank, I could write them by Hekate himself, in the eMMC restore tab.

I’m not an SX Core expert but I don’t believe the glitch depends upon boot0/1. I think you could trick it into bringing up Hekate without it.

Once you have it all back together, then boot Johns custom version of hakate, linked in the above guide, and under show hardware, check that EMMC is detected. This makes sure your soldering was good and the EMMC is working.

Now remove your SD card and put it in your PC, copy boot0,1 and rawnand.bin into the backup/xxxx/restore folder. where xxxx is a random folder name for your switch.

The put the SD card back into the switch, and go to tools, restore, and restore boot0/1 and then restore rawnand.bin. This will take a while to copy over and then verify, get a cup of tea and come back later.

Once this process is finished, you can shutdown your switch, then try booting normally. You should be able to load into the switch system, and all your data should be there, however the disk will still only show 26GB, like before, we need to expand the partition to fill the new drive. However since the drive is encrypted, we cannot just wipe it and remake it, we need to both expand the partition, and then format the partition inside the encryption to get the switch to see the new extended size.

 

[BaamAlex]

While it is nice that there are memory chips that have more capacity, but this is pointless in my eyes. Especially in relation to the ofw. I think you also get banned from nintendo with something like that (i guess?). And for cfw you need an sd card all the time anyway. Then you'd better buy a big one and have fun with it. And it's also less risky to break something.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

The sx core need the presence of eMMC (or the presence of some data on her) in order to boot hekate?

I'm pretty sure it does. Part of how the SX chips work (if I'm not mistaken) is by injecting code into the NAND, and glitching the console so it will run the unsigned code. The injecting code into NAND part would probably fail with a blank NAND.