How to diagnose and fix my personal switch (black screen, won't power on)

Nintendo Questions Nintendo Switch
1

I am new to this forum. I’ve been reading for a couple hours trying to figure out how to diagnose what is going on with my switch and I could use some help figuring out what to do next.

I purchased this switch new (Christmas 2019) and have never modded it or used it with anything other than the official Nintendo charger and dock. My kids use it pretty much daily in the dock and take good care of it. It’s lived 90% of its life sitting in the dock.

Yesterday they went to turn it on and it wouldn’t.

List of symptoms:

  • Switch was fully charged the day before
  • Switch sat in the dock overnight without any known incidents but wouldn’t turn on the next day
  • Kids said the switch firmware was a little strange the day before and got it a weird state where they couldn’t close a game that had crashed but its a game that frequently crashes (Minecraft Dungeons)
  • No visible dirt, dust or damage to USB-C port on switch or dock
  • Screen is black
  • Force shutdown doesn’t change anything (Holding power button for 20 seconds, waiting and they trying to power back up)
  • Trying to enter Recovery mode doesn’t change anything (Force power off, then hold +/- together and then press power)
  • When the switch is placed in the powered dock, the dock light blinks once with no change
  • When I power the switch directly from the Nintendo Power Adapter (HAC-002) the screen stays black and no charging icon is displayed on the screen
  • I don’t have a USB Power Meter so I can’t compare the USB current draw directly to other’s measurements, but I do have an old Kill-A-Watt power meter that measures the power being draw between the wall receptacle and the Nintendo Power Adapter.
  • If I connect computer USB-A port to switch USB-C port the switch enumerates as an Nvidia USB device (I’m running Ubuntu on my computer).

Kill-A-Watt Power measurements (Between wall receptable and Nintendo charger):

  • Charger plugged in to wall (but not switch): 0.0 W
  • Charged plugged into switch: 3.0 W steady (which doesn’t appear to jump to quick charge) (

Does anyone have recommendations on where to go from here?

  • Should I try to put the switch in RCM mode using a paper clip? If so, how does that help me?
  • Should I open up the switch and check the different chips, capacitors, ferrites, and filters for damage?
  • Something else?

FYI: I am fairly comfortable soldering and reworking PCBs and I have access to a digital microscope.
but my wife is not excited about me trying to use my skills to fix the switch :slight_smile:

Any help would be much appreciated!

2

Here is how the device Switch enumerates when connected to my computer running Ubuntu:

[ 36.148605] usb 1-2: USB disconnect, device number 2
[ 54.746393] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[ 54.897566] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0955, idProduct=7321, bcdDevice= 2.01
[ 54.897580] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 54.897583] usb 1-2: Product: APX
[ 54.897586] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: NVIDIA Corp.

3

Hi! Given that it was working fine, and died while in the dock, I would start by opening it up and checking for shorts around the M92T36 chip.