New major updates made in the $3 Pikofly Nintendo Switch modchip project

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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.
 

Kioku

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This might be too early, but a quick solder flex for in the future?
I’d honestly wait for a QS solution for something this compact. Hoping one comes.
 

SylverReZ

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Hopefully someone will make a open source one and we can print it on like pcbway
I'd love that if this was possible.
Post automatically merged:

Spaghetti wires! Good to see something come of this.

EDIT: MicroSD card. :unsure:
Was curious about the SD card part though.
 
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Foxi4

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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.
 

tech3475

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I stand corrected. How confusing

A part of me wonders if that was intentional, a way to trick people into buying these because of how much of a PITA it can be to get an actual RPi.

They could have called it something like the RP2040-Micro.

The Pi naming conventions are just as weird as USB…

To be fair, it seems to be a third party board, the RP2040 microcontroller is sold on it's own so in theory someone could make a custom board integrating it.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2040/
 
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