Late last year, a homebrew developer made a massive announcement: there was a new Nintendo Switch modchip coming soon, and it would support not just launch units, but also more modern OLED and Mariko Switch revisions (though not Erista). The icing on the cake was that the modchip to hack the Switch only cost $3. and consist of a RP2040-Zero unit, which hugely contrasted with the only other available modchip--the HWfly--which went for over $100 at the time. Dubbed the Pikofly chip, it would, in theory, be able to install custom firmware on your Switch.

Scene members quickly took notice, as many began working on breaking down how the chip functioned, with lots of information available in the Pikofly discussion thread. And now, thanks to their hard work, you can now take advantage of it, in order to get the Pikofly modchip working on your Switch. GBAtemp user Rehius has published a GitHub project page that has a firmware file and further documentation, while Flynnsmt4 managed to decrypt parts of the code, even creating a cycle-accurate emulator that further explains how the chip works. With these new milestones, people are already discussing techniques to solder the chip to their consoles.

If you're curious to see more, and how this unfolds, head on over to the Pikofly thread to see the latest discussion and updates.

 

[linuxares]

This is awesome news, however, I'll wait until tell someone makes a CFW for the OLED switches, or all Switches. I'm sure in time it will happen.

Atmosphere is agnostic but I guess you mean a software solution?

 

[reanonymousbusiness]

Someone should start selling these and make it available.

 

[Adran_Marit]

Someone should start selling these and make it available.

You can already buy everything you need, it's just getting an installer for it if you aren't confident

 

[Bladexdsl]

Someone should start selling these and make it available.

we all know how well that went last time!

 

[reanonymousbusiness]

You can already buy everything you need, it's just getting an installer for it if you aren't confident

well yeah, maybe something that's already ready to go with simple instructions? I am just thinking for the people just getting into all this.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I always wondered why use a Pi at all. This seems like massive overkill to me, seems like something the average microcontroller should handle, something along the lines of an AtMega. Then again, I don’t know exactly what code this is running, so I may be entirely off-base and that cortex is doing voodoo on the Switch. I suppose availability of resources and big community make it more attractive.

RP2040 boards are cheaper than most other alternatives. Even cheaper than Arduino clones. But what makes them special is the PIO (programmable I/O) functionality, which makes possible things an ATmega just couldn't do, because emulating hardware protocols in software is very slow (not to mention very timing sensitive, and you don't have precise timing with a 8/16mhz clock) and ATmega chips already run at a slow clock speed. PIO negates the need for emulating them in software.
AFAIK, Switch chips use glitching, similar to Xbox 360 RGH. This is rather timing sensitive, so it's possible an ATmega chip is just too slow for the accurate timing that is needed to make it work reliably every time. In my own experience with Arduinos, timing sensitive I/O is really where they fall apart.
A Teensy would be an option, but, those cost several times more than a Pi Pico.

 

[reanonymousbusiness]

we all know how well that went last time!

true

 

[zebrone]

So it useful for oled but not for mb Erista?
Why can we buy a mariko oled and avoid Erista?

 

[Adran_Marit]

So it useful for Oled but not Erista?
Why can we buy a mariko oled and avoid Erista?

Works on patched erista if what ive seen is correct

 

[zebrone]

Works on patched erista if what ive seen is correct

I dont know:
What do you mean for 'patched erista'?
I can buy any oled model or i may pay attemption?

 

[zoogie]

Yall might want to fork/clone that github. Like a few times.

 

[Foxi4]

The RP2040 has a special PIO hardware, which lets you execute very deliberate instructions in a single clock cycle. It's a compromise between bitbanging stuff with a CPU, or a very expensive CPLD/FPGA. It's small yet powerful, letting you even drive displays in real time, even unattended if you can program the DMA chain, for absolute 0% CPU usage.

To my knowledge, you need very short pulses to glitch the hardware (reverse-engineering the dumped firmware says it overclocks to 333MHz!), so I highly doubt a pity ATMega could handle this job. Or at least, definitely not an 8bit one.

Oh, that makes sense, thanks bud. I guess I’m just more used to seeing an ATMega 32U4 for stuff like this, but tighter timings and higher frequency requirements make sense if it’s sort of like a reset glitch hack.

 

[linuxares]

Yall might want to fork/clone that github. Like a few times.

it's probably to late for Nintendo now. It's most likely backed up on atleast a couple of computers.

 

[Advanced User]

@Chary
You know, it's Pico with a C, not a K. Would you mind correcting this?
It's misspelled in the original topic, too.

 

[Adran_Marit]

it's probably to late for Nintendo now. It's most likely backed up on atleast a couple of computers.

Surely no one would be that irresponsible right?

 

[orangy57]

I always wondered why use a Pi at all. This seems like massive overkill to me, seems like something the average microcontroller should handle, something along the lines of an AtMega. Then again, I don’t know exactly what code this is running, so I may be entirely off-base and that cortex is doing voodoo on the Switch. I suppose availability of resources and big community make it more attractive.

pretty sure the raspberry pi pico is just a microcontroller made by the raspberry pi ppl. The raspberry pi zero and regular pi are the ones with the arm processors. Raspberry pi naming schemes are getting garbled now since they have a tons of different SKUs that do mostly the same stuff. At least it's not as hard as finding the right arduino clone to use

EDIT: I'm wrong, even the pico even has an ARM Cortex processor inside but it's super low-power. I wonder if it was picked for convenience or if they needed more performance than an average microcontroller for some reason

 

[Blakejansen]

You can already buy everything you need, it's just getting an installer for it if you aren't confident

How hard is this compared to previous switch modchips? I've hardmodded a few consoles, but never a Nintendo switch.

 

[hippy dave]

How hard is this compared to previous switch modchips? I've hardmodded a few consoles, but never a Nintendo switch.

Same difficulty as the hwfly modchips for the same Switch models, significantly harder than the trinket installs for old unpatched Erista Switches.

 

[urbanman2004]

I rather just emulate Switch titles on my gaming rig, fuq Nintendo ‍♂.

 

[JonJaded]

So cool so see this get rumored and come to life over the past couple of months. Truly amazing community we have here.