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Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

My Macbook Pro charger charges Nintendo Switch, so maybe this was fixed later? Switch is 2017 device.

I have a launch-model Switch, and it still has trouble charging even on latest firmware. It's very possible that this is one of the "Mariko" fixes; Nintendo silently released a refresh of the Nintendo Switch before the OLED model was announced, dubbed the Mariko models. These had a number of changes, including but not limited to:

- New, more secure boot sequence

- Updated Nvidia Tegra board

- ~20% better battery life

- Reinforced chassis design

It seems likely that they took the opportunity with Mariko to redesign their charging ICs to be more tolerant. I heartily recommend looking up some of the more subtle differences between the models too, it's really interesting to see how Nintendo updated a mass-market product without anyone really noticing.

Just to make this thread a bit more aggravating, I have two pre-Mariko switches — at least they both have the Nvidia Tegra vulnerability, anyway — and I have yet to see either fail to charge on random USB-C cables and chargers.

As another poster mentioned, however, they will only dock with the OEM charger.

Seems like whatever is happening with the OG switch USB-C implementation it’s not straightforward.

When docking, the Switch specifically wants 15V/2.6A [1]. Any less and it won't dock. There are some third-party vendors which have somehow circumvented this requirement, though [2].

[1] https://switchchargers.com/how-nintendo-switch-charging-work... -- scroll down to "Nintendo Switch Dock"

[2] e.g. https://skullnco.com/collections/nintendo-switch/products/ju... and https://www.gulikit.com/productinfo/506086.html

The change has to have come earlier, my pre-Mariko Switch had no troubles charging from multiple phone, MacBook, tablet and 3rd party USB-C chargers.

It's interesting, that does seem to be what people are reporting... I wonder if that suggests that an IC redesign came before Mariko but after launch?

I'd say there was a firmware update of the USB-C chip somewhere early to fix bugs.

I have a device from launch, and remember for the first while this didn't work, but now does. It must've been fixed at some point with a SW update.

For me, it will charge but not power the dock for playing on a TV.

There's a specific PD profile (15V IIRC) that your charger needs in order to be able to power the dock, and older MacBook chargers didn't have it.

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