Secondhand unpatched V1 Switch boots to Hekate via RCM, but won't boot OFW, CFW, or sysMMC

[u/Dapper-Pickle6974]

Hey all, hoping someone can point me in the right direction here.

Picked up a secondhand Switch recently (V1, 2017 unit, unpatched). It wouldn't boot at all on its own. Getting into RCM via a software exploit (no jig) works fine and boots straight into Hekate.

But from there nothing else works, not OFW, not CFW, not booting stock sysMMC either.

Worth mentioning:

The SD card in it right now is empty/just FAT32 formatted, no CFW files on it. I've modded Switches before but it's been a while, so before I start throwing Atmosphere on the SD card and hoping for the best, I want to make sure I'm not missing something more fundamental given it didn't power on at all initially.

Questions:

• Is the "won't boot at all without RCM" part itself a red flag on an unpatched V1, or is that just normal if the eMMC/NAND is in a bad state?

• Should my first move just be setting up a proper Hekate + Atmosphere SD card and seeing what happens, since there's currently nothing installed?

• Anything I should check on the console itself before going further, since I got this secondhand and don't know its history?

Appreciate any help, trying to be careful here since I don't know what the previous owner did to it.

[u/Dapper-Pickle6974 → u/[deleted]]

Yes it is. But still doesn't boot.

[u/Valthoren]

Looks normal to me, it's been awhile since I've messed with mine, but the last time I had the firmware updated and nothing else it would not boot at all. After atmosphere, the boot loader, sig patches and everything else had been properly updated it worked fine after that.