Hello guys, this is my first post here! I just got a MIG Switch card out of curiosity and I was tinkering with it. For those who don't know, it's used by placing XCI dumps as well as other game specific bin files in the sd card of the MIG Switch, and are obtained from the original cartridge by using an app like nxdumptool. Two of these bin files are mandatory to get the game to boot: Initial Data.bin and Certificate.bin. They stay the same for every cartridge of a specific game. Now, if you want to use an XCI dump from a shady website it's impossible to get it to work without those files. By using the Certificate.bin from another game it has no problem, but this does not count for the Initial Data.bin. So I looked for a way to obtain this Initial Data from an XCI file and read a bit of the XCI file documentation from switchbrew dot org. Here's what I understood so far: The Switch checks if the cartridge is valid by doing a challenge–response authentication on the Initial Data. The Package ID is contained both on the XCI and the Initial Data, on positions 0x110 and 0x0 respectively. The Initial Data hash is on the XCI at position 0x160. It is calculated by doing a SHA-256 hash on the full Initial Data content. So I was wondering, is there a way to to construct a functional Initial Data file starting from an XCI dump? I also tried a reverse approach by editing the Package ID in the Initial Data from another game, generating the Initial Data hash and putting it in the XCI file but is not enough to get the Switch believe it's a real game. Sorry if this may seem stupid but let me know what you think.

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Hacking Question I have a bad NAND backup, can I format the USER partition and then just restore the rest of it?

Thread starter orangy57
Start date Jun 16, 2019
Views 2,558
Replies 3

orangy57

bruh

Member

Level 12

Jun 16, 2019

So my problem is that I created a NAND backup in december, and never had any issues. The problem I never noticed though is that the NAND is only 20 GB, and is missing like half of the USER partition. I now have 2 NAND backups, one of my old NAND, and one of my new NAND with homebrew on it. Could I just restore the new NAND and then overwrite all the other partitions with the old NAND files, and finally just format the USER partition? Does the USER partition need files to boot?

NOTE: I also have my biskeys and BOOT0/1 partitions

Last edited by orangy57, Jun 16, 2019

dreambottle

Member

Newcomer

Level 3

Jun 16, 2019

why don't you try?

orangy57

bruh

Member

Level 12

Jun 16, 2019

dreambottle said:
why don't you try?

I tried and I only booted to a black screen. I tried booting with atmosphere after anyway just to see if it would work and nothing. I'm just going to restore to my dirty backup.