Ripped Pad under APU, is it an important pad?

Nintendo Questions Nintendo Switch
, , , ,
21

I guess, the switch is now propably dead? Or at least the apu, something crazy happened. I resoldered the chip, even with the little “tip” on the edge, the pulling force of the flux and solder was strong, so I let go. But it seemed a bit odd, I could “sort of” see another column of pads on the mainboard to the left (when the RAM chips are on the right). And in my endless stupidity, although I noticed something was wrong, I put it back inside the case and tryed to power it on. Of course nothing happened, the ampmeter (at 5V, as I dont have something to plug the usb c port in yet) showed miliamp around 0-25 fluctuating all over the place. I disconnected and removed the apu again, just to confirm my prediction: The chip was 1 column off.

How can this happen?

Anyway, I reballed again, this time the first try did the trick, I guess I have more practice now. I then cleaned the board, soldered the apu back on, this time made sure it is in the correct place and plugged the ampmeter in again. Just the mainboard, without any accessories, even the nand is not installed, and I get 20 mA at 5,14 volts, but constantly. I thought it should go to about 15-20 mA but then drop to 0 mA, as it cannot power on or charge the battery.

So the apu is officially gone now? Or should I still put everything back together?

PS: Where can I get an APU for the switch anyway? Do I need to buy a broken mainboard or so?

22

probably just slightly off kilter, oridinarily you have a fair bit of margin but if your heat is somewhat inconsistent you can bring one side or area up to reflow state before another which will prevent the chip from righting itself. Or, sometimes it’s because you have one or more pads on the board not fully wicked and the chip wants to slide off it. Hard to say, these things happen :slight_smile:

As far as I remember you should get approx 0.4A/0.5A on a 5V supply even if the EMMC is removed. (don’t recall if this is with or without the battery connected or if it changes anything)

The EMMC has to be connected in order to initiliase high current charging, so on a working unit on a 5V supply it should be approx 0.4A/0.5A then drop to zero then after it clears the bootloader phase etc the current should jump up, typically anywhere from 0.6A to 2A (though this depends on battery level)

Yeah I really can’t see it living with that browning of the resin round the die :frowning: as I mentioned earlier you can check the resistance across the caps on the SoC which correlate with the boot CPU rail and the secondary CPU rail for confrimation.

I don’t know of anywhere unfortunately, trouble is even if there is a place, you’d have to trust that they haven’t ruined it getting it off a donor and that the EMMC is supplied with it and that the EMMC data is the actual data which is paired with the SoC.

That’s probably your best bet, though at that point your better off at repairing the board as opposed to transferring the SoC. Reballing the SoC on Switch is a complex task and takes a lot of practice, I don’t think i’ve met or talked to anyone who has managed to succesfully reball one on their first go (or several goes) and a lot of the donors I get in have the same damage to the SoC and the telltale browning which suggests a lot of other techs have trouble with this one too :frowning:

Regardless, at least you got some practice in and i’d imagine you’ve learned a fair bit in doing all this :smiley:

1 Like
23

Which caps would that be? I would like to check them too, just out of curiosity.

The practice part is soooo true. The first reballing 2 days ago took me at least 3 hours, or even longer. Nothing wanted to work, it was new to me. Yesterday, after the right-shift thing, I cleaned and reballed again, this time the first try worked almost flawlessly, after removing the stencil, there were about 5 missing balls, which I quickly put on with the tip of my tweezers and boom, done in about 15 minutes. Practice is really irreplaceable.

I mean, I paid 50€ for the set, it includes everything that comes with a switch in the original packaging. I got the dock, the joy cons, the original charger and so on. I guess, I can just sell the accessories for 50€ again, well, after repairing the missing thumbstick caps, but yeah, I will not make a loss on this one. Even if I just paid the 50€ for the tablet part itself and screwed up like this, I gained a lot of experience. Still worth it. And finally, now I have a donor board with, I hope, working parts, besides the SOC. I have a game card slot, an sd card slot, and so on :slight_smile:

24

The ones on the SoC I’ve forgotton tbh but it’s the same caps that the modchips solder onto. Though now the SoC is back on the board there is better locations to check these rails, on the inductors nearby the max IC just below the SoC and at either of the two paired inductors on the back of the board at the PMIC.

Absolutely, learn by failing, tis the only way :slight_smile: I don’t remember as it’s been so long but i’d imagine my first CPU or GPU swap back in the day likely resulted in failures … probably repeated failures. You will eventually get to the point where you can do this work with a rusty old hair dryer :wink: and will understand that while decent tools play a part and can make things easier, it’s more down to technique

right, always handy having a donor :+1:

1 Like
25

Erm… Well, I sure was not expecting this to happen: As I reessambled the switch and plugged it in, the charging indicator on the screen came on. I pressed the power button to see the Nintendo logo, but it could not start up and went back to the charging screen. Maybe the battery is just dead.

Could this possibly work? I was not expecting ANY reaction from this switch any more lol

26

OH MY GOOOOOD. The Switch just turned on… I am so done… What on earth is going on`? XDD

Unfortunately, there is parentel control active. I contacted the seller, if he can provide me the pin. But this is really nice. I am still shaking.

Now I just have to clean up the mess, I caused: In the process I destroyed the FPC connector of the SD Card slot and the Plug on the mainboard for the right speaker. And after that, the switch gets a whole new shell (back and front) and will look like new.

Oh baby, here we go :smiley:

Of course, i have to do further testing, but for now, I turned it on and just barely tested the touch screen and it looked like it is working. I still cant believe it.

27

nice one :slight_smile: very lucky, don’t think I’ve ever had one with such a cooked SoC still work, I mean, think i had one once which was on the verge with partial brown spots which worked.

Though just to curve any potential disapointment I’ll say, it might be not long for this world and issues may present themself as time goes on… but who knows maybe it will last years :wink: I’d probably say keep this for yourself / use as a reference board, it will be sods law if you sell it it will break the next day :smiley:

I think there was a website which generates the code… I could be remembering wrong but I had once case where this didn’t work (maybe upper OS version the cause) and i just had nintendo online chat give me the key/remove it.

Yeah me neither. Nice work dude :slight_smile:

1 Like
28

Ok, I tested almost everything, the left joy con seems a bit defective, I have always a drift to the left. But since I wanted to change the sticks anyway, it is no big deal. The battery of the console and the joycons work, the game slot works. I couldnt test the sd slot obviously, but everything else seems to work. I contacted nintendo in hope they will help me with parental control, as I dont get any answer from the seller.

Thank you so much mate, you helped me so much. Now I just need to figure out how to soft-mod a switch and I will be good to go. Well, after fixing the fpc connector. I will not fix the speaker I guess, as the left speaker itself is loud enough.

I hope the switch docks, which is the next thing to test. If not, I will propably need to change an IC or the HDMI Filters, but one step at a time :smiley:

29

Another way of doing it if i remember right is I I think if you do the whole volume up down and power button at boot and get into the recovery menu and then do a factory reset or maybe or maybe it was a factory initialize (which will wipe the data and user info) then I think that removes parental controls too (assuming I’m remembering right and nothing has changed on recent HOS versions - I’d definately do a quick search to verify this mind you), you might think to yourself that you don’t want to do this if there is already installed games from the prior owner, but I think following an update it asks for the nintendo login of the game purchaser in order to play them anyway so may as well be done with it and wipe it.:slight_smile:

Haha I’m not sure I’ve helped at all, I was sure when i saw the images of the SoC die that this one was gonner for sure as the rails I mentioned usually get dragged down as a result and go hand in hand with this.

True, though you might find some games you don’t hear audio at all in spots as you’ll be missing a whole channel. You should be able to use a soldering iron to get another speaker connector on without to much issues, so no fear of harming anything else. Alternatively, if you don’t mind any future potential annoyance when removing the board, you can just solder the speaker wires directly to the board instead.

For the SD connector, is it just pin issues or is the plastic gone/messed up? if it’s just a few pins you can pull just the needed pins off another connector and solder them by hand

:crossed_fingers:

1 Like
30

Well, back to the drawing board I guess.

I tested everything, even this JIG thing and all, so I turned the console off, finally fully assembled it then then it was dead… Like, dead dead. I reoppened it, checked everything, disconnected and reconnected everything and then I had backlight and could use touch and hear anything, but no display at all. The charger stays at 0,45 Amps at 5 Volts, I am out of things to try.

Any tips or hints?

Just one Pin is missing on the FPC Connector.

32

best guess would be bent LCD pin, everybody bends a pin on this connector at least once.

if you can find the pin you can pop it back on and solder it. If no (and I don’t endorse doing this, but I’m assuming this is your own personal console from here on out) rob one of the ground pins (assuming the missing pin was for a signal line) and use it in place

33

Sorry for the tripple post.

I got some new info. I could narrow down the problem to 2 possible things: The APU or the NAND.

Reason is: I reflowed the APU yet again, it works now. Additionally, I cleaned the FPC Connector of the Nand. I would randomly get the Error 2002-3538. I guess, the NAND lost connection, as after this message, the switch does not turn on again, until I remove the nand and reinstall it. But, it might also be the APU, as when I tightened the 3 heatsink screws, it could maybe be to much downpressing force on the APU…

I left it as is now, I did not screw the heatsink screws all the way, but as I could feel and hear, the heat is still being transfered away by the cooling system. And, as mentioned earlier, I cleaned the contacts of the nand on the nand side and mainboard side. Now everything is back together and seemingly working, it also docks, and everything else seems normal behaving.

Oh, by the way, I just yoloed the pin and got it right on the second try :rofl: :joy:
My first guess was 6969 for obvious reasons, then my second guess was 1234 and who would have thought, it was right. After all these above mentioned procedures, I then attempted a full factory reset, it went through a firmware update from 9.20 to 16 or so, well, the latest, then I could remove everything. So I guess, it is somewhat fixed now?

I will never be too sure with this switch, but again, I learned so much on the way to now. If it ever was to break again, I don’t think that I would try yet another fixing attempt, but as of now, I will just enjoy it, as long as it lasts.

Lastly, I ordered some parts, like the sd card fpc connector, 2 new analog sticks, and some smaller parts, however, I am very unsure if I should ever take this switch apart or not… Then again, I cannot install a cfw, if I don’t, so the switch is pretty much useles in this current state. I will risk it and solder the connector I guess. Maybe by hand, without hot air.

34

Hmm Interesting failure mode, I guess it’s entirely possible it could be either or both as they all have various I/O to the SoC (as does the LCD connector too which might be why you weren’t getting display but the console was evidently on behind the scenes)

Might be fun to disconnect battery/power and check those rails resisance to ground I mentioned earlier, might let you know / show deterioration as time goes on which might be good to know

classic :slight_smile:

from everything you’ve said, sounds like the SoC is on it’s last legs, though you never know you might get a bit of time with it until it dies, or it might just string you along and work for a while, throw an error or no display etc as it has done to you earlier and then start working again over and over. I suppose if you wanted to stress it, a high intensity game/demo would probably be most likely to cause it.

right, that’s the main thing :slight_smile: kind of amazing it even booted at all so be proud :+1:

1 Like
35

I just tried to insert a micro sd card, the switch wanted an update, made it and the system really showed me the 128 gig micro sd. Could it be that the lost pin was just for redundancy or even unneeded? I cant believe my luck actually. I am in fear now that something bad will happen and I somehow used up my whole luck on this single switch :open_mouth:

36

quite a few ground pins on the SD connector, most for stability (cheap “shielding” to prevent line crosstalk / interference) You can get away with it and in the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge deal (compared to everything else)

1 Like
37

Do you have, by any chance, a pinout of the fpc connector? I know which pin is missing, I would like to check

38

it will be a ground pin bud, can’t really be much else, I’m pretty sure it would throw an error if one of the dat lines was open (which is really the only other possible lines it could be) if you were missing anything else it wouldn’t work. You can test this though with your meter, just disconnect batter/power and put your meter in continuity and check the corresponding pad or the missing pin to ground

1 Like
39

For future reference, getting around parental controls is the easiest thing and the world and costs a whopping 50 cents to do. Simply fail the parental controls until it locks you out (3 attempts), then press the + button or tap the appropriate spot on the screen to load more info, this screen will give you a website to go to as well as a master key to input. Go to website, follow instructions to get to the right place, input the master key and pay nintendo their fee, then you will get a new key to input on the switch and reset the PIN to one of your choosing. Once you have the PIN reset, simply go to parental controls and completely disable it. Takes all of about 5-10 minutes.

Ive made some good money “fixing” parental locked switches and will always snap them up if priced right as its a quick flip lol

1 Like
40

As mentioned, last one i had which had parental controls which for some reason I couldn’t use the “open” site as it had issues for some reason (I forget the website but i guess the reason i had trouble with it was because of the newer OS version) but it used to be quick and free, In the end I just went onto the Nintendo US chat and have them do it for free in about two minutes.

Doesn’t factory erase/initialize from the recovery menu clear this anyway? I guess not an option if you want to preserve user data.

41

Ah found it, Now it’s coming back to me - from the site

What is the deal with v4 (Switch 8.0.0+)?
Nintendo has changed the algorithm to require a unique device ID that is stored on the console that can be difficult to obtain without exploiting the console in some way.
The device ID can be derived from fuses or obtained from PRODINFO on the Switch.

so basically it needs to be unpatched or modded for some versions.in order for this method to work

https://mkey.salthax.org/

Anything higher, just use the script in Nintendo US online chat “I bought a Switch off ebay” etc and they’ll do it (Or I should say they used to)

1 Like