It's totally possible to make an opensource XCI mounter. It's even kind of easy what I heard people tell me. It's just "Why?" most people have said. It's no use and you will paint a target on you from Nintendo.
As I read a user in this thread, SXOS uses a virtual environment to simulate the cartridge. But even if they did something like that, they would have to deal with using "part of the nintendo code" to verify the .xci as cartridges. Perhaps you can create a patcher or extractor of said code without sharing it, as they did when injecting the fake fingerprint in SXOS.
I'm not saying that it can't be done, in fact the same person who says it has no idea how to do it. But if an engineering job is required at the level of Atmosphere or a VMware. It always takes some work, unless someone eventually decompiles the SXOS code and deploys their virtual .xci cartridge environment to atmosphere, but it would still require Atmosphere to recognize it since it has an architecture that only SXOS recognizes, as a type of Homebrew not compatible with Atmosphere.
PD: An interpreter is needed, maybe the one who created Nintendont would know what to do
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I have atmosphere and also SXOS I just don't get the reason to mount an XCI. The only beneficial thing is you can run your games from the External HDD but who's really going to play 50 games at one time?
Do you really have to repeat the .xci mounting utility over and over again?
1 - Less memory wear when rewriting it to install games.
2 - An extensive library of games using an HDD with more space and less cost than a MicroSD with a higher write cycle limit.
The only disadvantages would be the weight of the .XCI, having to recompile them with new Updates and expansions and greater energy use. The Dock has a USB 3.X port behind it in the middle of the charger and HDMI input.
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Of course. But imagine from a big N view here and devs.
XCI is only for piracy while NSPs are of course used for piracy as well, but it's also a good format for other things like homebrew etc.
Can a Homebrew be fully hosted on an NSP by reading the resources directly from romfs and not in the Switch folder on the MicroSD? Because if so, it would help me to convert several homebrews into NSP, such as MaxPayne, or several emulators and mount them as .XCI on an external USB memory, since until now it is not possible to load homebrews from USB.
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We all agree that mounting .XCi is cumbersome.
And we all agree that what we need is not to mount .xci, but to run an EmuNand from USB. Hopefully that glorious day will come soon.