I repaired more switches than anything because there was an ample supply of broken ones and they were easy to sell as refurbished. I stopped a few years ago but for awhile I would buy every broken switch I could get my hands on that was reasonably priced, fix it (if possible), and resell it
I would argue they are very repairable though it is in spite of nintendo, not because of them. The modular design does help a bit but ultimately what helps is that there were a lot of people like me posting notes online and if you know where to look (badcaps, gbatemp, youtube (side note youtube fucking sucks for this post your notes as actual notes), etc) there is extensive documentation on the switch and joycon motherboards to the point where they’ve basically been reverse engineered (not fully but close enough).
Then on top of that there is a huge level of support from Chinese manufacturing. I can get all the chips that were hard to source from places like mouser and digikey on AliExpress. I can get replacement joysticks, batteries, fans, usb c ports, LCDs, casings, basically everything Nintendo won’t sell, and most of it is all solid quality. In some cases it’s greatly improved - I can skip the $3 joycon stick replacement that will inevitably drift again in 6 months because of the flawed design and get the $20 Hall effect stick replacement that will last for years. I have these in my switch and they work great, I haven’t replaced the sticks since like 2020
Nintendo made the somewhat modular design and not pairing parts right but otherwise fucking suck at support. If you get one I refurbished they’ll tell you to go fuck yourself. Fuck nintendo. That said if you want a console you can repair yourself the switch is extremely well documented and parts are everywhere.
Keep in mind that not all switches are fixable before you buy a broken one and some repairs are extremely complex. If the emmc is fucked you’re screwed because it’s paired to the cpu. If there’s a short in the cpu you’re screwed unless reballing the cpu fixes it but this is generally not worth the effort and probably won’t work. If someone else who sucks tried fixing it first you might find a nightmare scenario of board damage: the worst deals I got were ones where someone said their switch broke and sold it to me, I opened it up, and it was clear they tried to replace the usb c port. This isn’t a terribly difficult fix if you know what you’re doing but if you’re new to soldering it’s pretty challenging, definitely not a first project. So the board is all charred, burnt flux (from flux core solder, they never use flux haha), pads lifted and traces ruined, blobs of solder, passives in the area like filters just straight up missing. Fixing all that is a nightmare so it becomes a donor
The non existence of official parts and guides is a big part of their downgrade. Also glued in battery. If you need any sort of special tools or have to search for random salvaged parts, that rightfully tanks the score imo.
When i open up mass produced consumer device like that i wanna see a QR code on each part that leads me to a swap guide and a shop page.
The eMMC is not paired to CPU, I have replaced mine with a 64 GB one. Had to dump data from the original, restore it to the new one and use some tools (including patched hekate) to repartition it. I’m keeping the original module as a backup
You’re correct, I was misremembering (it’s been awhile)
The prodinfo/console identifier is on the emmc and in situations where the console was dead or not hacked this couldn’t be dumped (although looking it up now it appears there are methods to extract prodinfo from dead emmc or generate a fake one that will get you banned but make the console boot).
I repaired more switches than anything because there was an ample supply of broken ones and they were easy to sell as refurbished. I stopped a few years ago but for awhile I would buy every broken switch I could get my hands on that was reasonably priced, fix it (if possible), and resell it
I would argue they are very repairable though it is in spite of nintendo, not because of them. The modular design does help a bit but ultimately what helps is that there were a lot of people like me posting notes online and if you know where to look (badcaps, gbatemp, youtube (side note youtube fucking sucks for this post your notes as actual notes), etc) there is extensive documentation on the switch and joycon motherboards to the point where they’ve basically been reverse engineered (not fully but close enough).
Then on top of that there is a huge level of support from Chinese manufacturing. I can get all the chips that were hard to source from places like mouser and digikey on AliExpress. I can get replacement joysticks, batteries, fans, usb c ports, LCDs, casings, basically everything Nintendo won’t sell, and most of it is all solid quality. In some cases it’s greatly improved - I can skip the $3 joycon stick replacement that will inevitably drift again in 6 months because of the flawed design and get the $20 Hall effect stick replacement that will last for years. I have these in my switch and they work great, I haven’t replaced the sticks since like 2020
Nintendo made the somewhat modular design and not pairing parts right but otherwise fucking suck at support. If you get one I refurbished they’ll tell you to go fuck yourself. Fuck nintendo. That said if you want a console you can repair yourself the switch is extremely well documented and parts are everywhere.
Keep in mind that not all switches are fixable before you buy a broken one and some repairs are extremely complex. If the emmc is fucked you’re screwed because it’s paired to the cpu. If there’s a short in the cpu you’re screwed unless reballing the cpu fixes it but this is generally not worth the effort and probably won’t work. If someone else who sucks tried fixing it first you might find a nightmare scenario of board damage: the worst deals I got were ones where someone said their switch broke and sold it to me, I opened it up, and it was clear they tried to replace the usb c port. This isn’t a terribly difficult fix if you know what you’re doing but if you’re new to soldering it’s pretty challenging, definitely not a first project. So the board is all charred, burnt flux (from flux core solder, they never use flux haha), pads lifted and traces ruined, blobs of solder, passives in the area like filters just straight up missing. Fixing all that is a nightmare so it becomes a donor
The non existence of official parts and guides is a big part of their downgrade. Also glued in battery. If you need any sort of special tools or have to search for random salvaged parts, that rightfully tanks the score imo.
When i open up mass produced consumer device like that i wanna see a QR code on each part that leads me to a swap guide and a shop page.
The eMMC is not paired to CPU, I have replaced mine with a 64 GB one. Had to dump data from the original, restore it to the new one and use some tools (including patched hekate) to repartition it. I’m keeping the original module as a backup
You’re correct, I was misremembering (it’s been awhile)
The prodinfo/console identifier is on the emmc and in situations where the console was dead or not hacked this couldn’t be dumped (although looking it up now it appears there are methods to extract prodinfo from dead emmc or generate a fake one that will get you banned but make the console boot).