Introduction to modchips
Introduction¶
This guide will guide you through the installation of modchips, there are important things you should know before continuing with this guide.
Information
If you came here from the NH Server guide, you're here to modchip your Switch. Follow along with this guide if you have the required skills to do so.
Again, this guide is not for beginners and the Switch is not a good first project.¶
The first thing you should know is that this guide is not something you will want to follow without any prior (micro)soldering experience whatsoever. Installing a modchip requires the aforementioned microsoldering skills and also requires hardware knowledge (knowledge about hardware in general and also the layout of the Switch's motherboard).
The second most important thing is that we only support Picofly (the stock RP2040 Zero development board and "modchip variant" of it) as it's fully open source from its RP2040 microcontroller to its firmware.
Any modchip containing the RP2040 microcontroller is a Picofly modchip.
You can find them on AliExpress and similar websites by common names such as RP2040 switch or simply picofly, Amazon also has resellers that sell them but (as should be known), resellers sell the cheaper AliExpress products for a higher price. Buying them from Amazon is not recommended unless you don't care about the price.
- Note: Picofly listings with "Hwfly" in the name are not Hwfly modchips but just use the word as keyword so they can be found easier. Picofly modchips have the larger square black chip with the Raspberry Pi logo on them, which is one way of identifying them (this is the
RP2040microcontroller). They also look much "simpler" in appearance compared to Hwfly modchips.
Once you've read this, you may continue to the next page.
Note
Other modchips, such as Hwfly or Instinct-NX are not assisted with except for the flashing of open source firmware to Hwfly and SX based modchips. The reason for this is because Hwfly and Instinct-NX are derivatives of SX series modchips, also referred to as "clones". SX series modchips were produced by TX (Team Xecuter) and they were part of the reason why Switch modchips have the bad reputation they have. Next to that, TX are also responsible for the creation of Hwfly and Instinct-NX modchips (or continuation of SX series modchips). They also use closed source microcontrollers, board designs and use poor quality board components.