If you’re interested, RIP Felix did a pretty good video on YouTube about the YLOD failures. TL:DW is most early models have defective GPUs, plus the ones that survived now have aging capacitors, but there’s tools now to find the exact cause from the system controller (SYSCON). A GPU swap is pretty involved though, so needs a skilled technician to pull it off. Still, if you have one of those early backwards compatible models, having it repaired isn’t that bad of an idea nowadays since those consoles are only getting rarer.

The PS3 is in competition with the original Xbox One for being the most undercooked and overpriced launch of a game console. I guess it’s what made the recovery even more astounding.

I guess they had to remove backwards compatibility at some point considering the solution was to shove an entire PS2 CPU and GPU onto the motherboard, massively driving up the already stratospheric production cost that they lost money on even with the high launch prices. Still, it is unfortunate it went away, as it ensured that PS2 games would play perfectly and as intended on PS3 with a proper HDMI output too. Plus, since it went away early, it means all the models with backwards compatibility have the defective GPUs that can cause a yellow light of death. A PS3 Slim with PS2 compatibility would have been amazing. I agree so much with XMB being peak UI design as well, almost every console following has in my opinion a worse UI, other than maybe the Switch, but that’s because the Switch barely has much beyond a game selector.

I am quite excited for if Valve make a successor to the Steam Machine, as the Deck shows a Linux gaming device can be the perfect do anything device. The first Steam Machine was not ready for prime time when it came out, but it came before Proton.

We don’t talk about Bruno the Microsoft POSIX subsystem

Ah, I meant the current Nintendo store system that they changed to after stopping the invite system. Anyone buying it from Nintendo of Europe can pre order it now as long as they have an active Switch Online subscription.

So it appears the screw holes weren’t just on my Joy Cons. I guess at least it gives some comfort to know they were all built terribly (my Joy Cons even had missing solder on the supports for the button), but I really do hope the quality on the Joy Cons improves with Switch 2.

I get you so much. I used to also be the kind of kid who would disassemble pretty much anything in sight (thankfully nothing too expensive was broken) and I definitely get the purpose of the tri wings, as pretty much nothing outside of electronic specialised kits or specific drivers have those bits. My DS thankfully did not end up being the subject of experimentation (until I got my iFixit kit-). I wish Security Torx was the solution to this problem (high torque, but can’t open it with a regular Torx driver) but at this point there’s probably more Security Torx drivers out there than non-Security since Security Torx is used seemingly everywhere.

Also I must accept the reality of the screw quality - very few people are probably disassembling their Switch at all, so they can get away with poor quality screws since if you go to Nintendo (at least here in the UK) they’ll just send you a refurbished unit and you can be on your merry way. Unfortunate for hobbyists though, especially considering Nintendo’s turnaround times sometimes.

Also, if you’ve still got the bits of the Walkman lying around somewhere, it might be worth giving fixing it now a shot. The old Sony service manuals (which are amazingly written by the way, I wish every manual could be like it) are usually widely available across the internet, and there’s now a fairly active community who make items like replacement drive belts and gears. Can’t really say much more though, I’m mostly a retro iPod guy (love my 4th gen).

I hope so as well. Switch 2 using magnetic attachment rather than the crummy plastic buckle locks for the Joy Cons is a good sign, but we’ll wait and see what the final product is like. Got one on pre order, so will probably post about it not long after I get it.

People who have both another platform and a Switch: confused screaming

Today I learned that for some reason some DNS servers don’t like SRV records, so had to troubleshoot it when people were unable to log onto my Minecraft server that is on a non-default port.

Thanks for the data sheet! I struggled to find anything even vaguely official about the X1, so this is quite helpful. I think the throttling at around 70 could be our culprit, as (assuming most of the docked power goes to the SOC) I’ve had processors in portable devices in that sort of power class with similar size coolers have junction temperatures go into the 80s and 90s regularly, so probably in heavier games the temperature goes past that threshold regularly on a lot of systems. This is not helped by the thermal compound both ageing and probably not being the best thing even on day 1, in comparison to something like PhaseSheet that is among the top performers.

Part of me is curious as to if Nintendo have a low temperature target set for the SOC that could see the boost stop early, and the lower temperatures from a repaste allow us to get past it. The data sheet suggests that the throttling thresholds are configurable considering there are no default numbers in the document at all, so Nintendo might have gone more conservative to increase system reliability. If you can, try and get some frequency data, as this might be the reason as to why I’m seeing an improvement.

I am excited to see your results, as it’ll give some hard numbers to see if this is worth all the trouble for everyone to accomplish (the heat spreader is quite the pain to remove).

Unfortunately, I’ll probably not be able to confirm the results with hard numbers for a while until a new way to modify the Switch is found, as I have a system with a patched chip that blocks one of the main current methods, and I’ll probably leave mod chipping it as I have a PC right next to it for all the stuff I would do on a modded system. I might try and see if I can borrow an unopened Switch some day for a side by side comparison. Also a heads up in case you do try this, the thermal paste on top of and under the main cooler is fairly accessible, but getting to the one under the heat spreader is quite a task involving prying in just the right spots to not break the spreader or the board. Just be prepared to take your time, and that you are kind of risking your Switch doing that final paste. The other spots however are easy to get to, so if you are experienced taking apart electronics they aren’t too much of a hassle and can still provide some benefit, especially if you’re on an older system.

You raise some fair points. I’ll answer to the best of my knowledge:

• Dust: There was nearly zero dust in the system, as it has been kept in a clean room and has been used outside only rarely. Therefore, the only dust was a bit on the speakers.
• Temperature sensors: There were no temperature sensors on any of the parts I removed, so I assume the Switch is like a PC GPU where the sensors are integrated into the chips rather than being external. The fan still spins at a decent pace to keep up with the heat, so those sensors still appear to be working.

One of us! One of us!

Agree so much! 5 was amazing (although will always have a soft spot for 4) especially with the ending. Blurry being in the game is possibly the most 2005 thing to happen, and I love it.

I think with the expanded third party support we saw on the Switch (and will likely follow with Switch 2), handheld PCs will still remain a mostly distinct market from the Switch. They are more of an alternative option - more choice from the massive PC backlog + emulators, but none of the heavy hitter Switch 2 exclusives. They will keep the pressure on Nintendo, however, to keep indie developers happy enough to go through the extra work to make Switch ports of their games, as the PC development experience is far more flexible. For PC gamers, the Switch serves as what I like to call a “gap filler” - anything that doesn’t get released on PC almost certainly gets released on Switch, so the platforms complement each other quite well.

Even ROCm on some distros isn’t that bad. On my 7900 XTX (admittedly an officially supported card, your mileage may vary on unofficial cards) on Fedora it was just a case of doing sudo dnf install rocm-* and everything installed (might be some extra packages you need after for specific apps, but you know if you need them). On openSUSE though, it was a total pain.

Works fine for me in KDE when icons are also set to Breeze Dark. Page goes dark, icons go light, toolbar goes dark.

I would suggest holding off on buying an ARM laptop specifically for Linux at the moment (maybe not too long from now though). Although there is an increasing amount of support, it’s still not fully there, and there is most likely going to be quirks here or there that can throw some issues you would rather not deal with on a daily driver machine (e.g. having to extract firmware from the Windows partition in order to get some features working for the Snapdragon devices). Probably your best combination of power efficiency and performance on x86 at the moment will be something like the Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs. If you like ThinkPads, I would suggest the Ryzen version of the T14s Gen 6, which is essentially the same as the ARM version bar the CPU. I’ve been using a P14s (very similar to T14s just with some tweaks as it’s marketed for mobile workstation users) Gen 5 and even with the lower capacity 39.3Wh battery (compared to the 57Wh battery you can get on a Gen 6) I’ve easily been able to get 6 or 8 hours in the balanced power profile with ~70% brightness on Fedora, so probably the T14s Gen 6 can do 10 or 12 hours on a charge.