I finally found the time to read through all the new replies, im quite surprised there are so many!
Alright, lets begin with what I tried today.
can you test continuity, pin 4 to the capacitor (2 over from the missing resistor). if you get teh beep beeps then you should scroll to page 26. VCCIN to VSTR/ATST2 to XRST (Digital block Reset). you really just want to throw that resistor back on there. best way to do it --> flux and leaded solder the pads, then wick them clean. flux the now clean pads, hold the resistor on the pads with tweezers (just apply pressure in the middle, on the top), tin a chisel tip and hit both pads at the same time (you have a perfect angle to do this)
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oh yeah, you should read page 27 as well. btw, does this IC get hot fast? run down to fred meyers and buy some 99% IPA, cover the chip with it and power on the device, see if it instantly evaporates
@LineoftheDead I measured continuity between pin 4 (XRST) and the capacitor with the light color 2 components to the right of the missing one. Continuity was present between those points, so you are right. However I tried soldering on wires from where toe original resistor was and then attached a potentiometer up to it which I then set to around 100k Ohms, so it should have done the job, right? Or perhaps the potentiometer was a little inaccurate? I dont think an additional 0.5k Ohms more or less would make a huge difference on the potentiometer.
Also, I could not find any chips that are getting hot while the switch is running, so I do not think overheating is the issue here. IPA did not evaporate off of any chips instantly, and I can barely feel heat on any chips anyways. The back side of the mainboard also does not have any overheating ICs.
I would try reflowing the whole pcb and add a little flux. Sounds like a heat related issue to me, if not then i would call it as being faulty chips with micro fractures.
@DeadlyFoez I do not think this is an issue with overheating, as, with already mentioned above, no chips get hot at all. Still, strangely enough when I first boot the console on a new day it lasts for a couple minutes, but the more I repeat unplugging the battery and trying to boot up the console the shorter it lasts in newer attempts. Perhaps something is actually cooling down or making contact again during the night? Reflowing would certainly fix any bad solder connections especially on bga chips, but firstly I do not have a reflow oven (only a traditional baking oven for... well... cooking?) and seconly I would like to keep this attempt to fix the issue as a last escape in case everything else fails. I am concerned about any plastic connectors on the board though, wouldnt they melt off while reflowing?
You can still try claiming the warranty on it. Assuming you did not break any seals or mar the insides then it is all good. I am not sure of the complete electronics warranty laws of Germany but they are typically in line with much of Europe which often has rulings like "if it was not something you screwed up then it plays, car warranties typically being this -- your nitrous kit might destroy your engine but they still get to fix your boot latch and they can't write the whole thing off). I would also struggle to see an ethical issue as well.
Having to pull power or run down the battery is nothing unusual on modern systems -- so many only have software controlled power buttons.
Something being measured in the minutes is either something overheating or something which only kicks in long after initialisation. You can try to narrow that down by idling in a low activity menu with wifi off and all that vs jumping right into a game and having all CGI intro and whatnot, as well as immediately powering back on after unplugging the battery before it has a chance to really cool back down. Let's not go into the freeze spray fixing methods just yet, not least of all because that is trickier on security focused devices that tend to lock up on exceptions.
We don't really know the switch boot path and how many services they might have stuck a delay on, though your battery concerns might be that.
If you have a thermal camera or maybe a laser thermometer you can try to see any heat build up.
On to the battery stuff mentioned. Makes sense. I have yet to read the datasheet for the IC but if you have a stabilised bench supply then I might consider bypassing that. However if it is expecting some kind of data signal out of the IC to inform the firmware you might also be lumped recreating that. Likely something you could fake with a microcontroller but cross that bridge as and when.
Edit. Started reading the datasheet.
Looks like you have the M92A family where this says M92T36. I could not find 36 but there was 30 [Had to remove link because spam or something]
The marking pages are not helpful in telling me what the differences might be so this is still an unknown. The difference between the 56 and the 50 is in supply voltage (not looked at the sheets yet).
The typical application circuit varies on this pin as well, the A family having no resistor where the T does, though in both cases go to VCCin. Right now I don't know what that might do as far as cooking it (if it is extreme cases current limiting then that is one thing, if it is more a fusible link then that is another and if it is general limiting that is another still). Said application circuits have 100KOhm resistors there, and the internal equivalent circuit for the pin do not all have resistors on them. If your pot was not in the 100K range then maybe go back and take a look.
@FAST6191 Claiming warranty on the thing will mostly fail, I already left my marks everywhere (including stripped screws that I cannot use anymore etc.)
As already mentioned above, I cannot find any overheating components on the board while its running or while it froze. It could very well be some bad solder joints that "shrink" back together after one night so they work for quite some time and the more often I reboot the system all the time the less time it actually lasts. Its as if the thing is sort of regenerating itself during the night when its not being experimented on by me. Reflowing, as others mentioned, could really be the way to go here, but apart from the reason that I dont (yet) have a way of doing that, I would like to keep the reflow method as a last resort for now. I also do not have a lab bench power supply so i cant really try powering the device like that, but with that logic the same is probably going to happen. Speaking of power, what do you think the grey cable of the battery is for? It sometimes measures odd Voltages to ground, so I am wondering what that could be for, maybe this is what is providing some sort of data to the switch that causes it to freeze? Anyways, it turns out I do indeed have the M92T model of the IC as the A model has been released after the switch was in production. Still, I do not quite understand the purpose of XRST and VSTR yet, or if it has in any way something to do with the not-actively-updating battery percentage during when the console is running?
My potentiometer that I attached to where the original resistor was read 100k Ohms, exactly like the one that should have been on the spot. I also checked with my multimeter to see if the resistance was right, and the pot only varied in about 0.5k Ohms. Surely that wont be enough to keep the thing from not working at all, but I might try it with the pot again if you think the resistor value has to be a lot more precise. Still, 99.5k - 100.5k Ohms should have worked if the missing resistor was the problem.
It does sound like a heat issue. Are all chips in proper contact with the heatsink? There may be more than one, and if they have been cleaned they may not have the right amount of thermal paste.
@Futurdreamz See above. It is probably not a heat issue, I cannot find any chips that seem to get hot while the console is running. Though there might be a faulty chip that is failing at fairly low warm temperatures already. Im probably going to have to test that out a little more.
I would suggest on the moment of hang up try to see with an IR cam if it is overheated... because your symptoms don't exactly specify overheating issues. Nvidia stuff always starts with artefacts when they overheat... OP did not mention that just yet.
Another thought: did you test if the same happens when not playing a game? And did you reinstall the console?
@B4rtj4h I dont have an IR cam, but the mainboard is not overheating anywhere at all, like you can read above the worst it could be is a faulty chip that misbehaves even on low warm temps. Also to clarify: It also freezes when playing games, it does not matter what I do. I also initialized the console again, but it still freezes, so It is not some sort of corrupt software.
Check the crash logs, see if it mentions kernel panics (?) or something. I remember a while back trying to repair a phone with a similar issue, turned out the terminal of the battery pack that communicates the temperature had failed, so the OS kept trying to get that data and would shut down for safety reasons after a certain number of failed attempts. Of course, your issue might be different entirely but crash logs could provide some useful information.
@NekoMichi The crash logs or rather "Last error messages" just show some errors that I got because of other reasons like because it couldnt connect to the eShop because I did not set up the Wifi.
Also a little update:
I tried unplugging everything that was not needed to run the console, that means one of the joycon connectors, any antenna cables, the display cables, the digitizer and cartridge reader cable, and anything else besides the backlight cable, one speaker cable and the battery wires. I could hear when the switch froze when I noticed that the menu did not make any more clicking sounds when using the controller to browse the main menu and selecting things. I have also replaced the thermal paste behind the cpu shield now (see attached pictures), and while I was at it I checked whether the DRAM next to the cpu or the cpu itself got hot while running the switch, and again, they did not. I put the cpu shield back on again.
Also I will be receiving the charging adapter for the switch dock (which was not included so I had to buy one) in 10 Hours, perhaps I can dock the switch into TV mode and see if it freezes then as well. Perhaps in docked mode power distribution and all of that behaves differently. And lastly, as many have already suggested, if this project goes nowhere, I will eventually try reflowing the mainboardl, but lets not consider this method just yet.
In the meantime I will be trying to find a little 100k Ohm resistor to put on the place where the missing one now is, if I just knew the package size those tiny resistors are.
Anyways, hope this was informative, perhaps we can sooner or later find the problem.
And as usualy, thanks for any help!