

How old is the switch? There will be someone you can sell it to who will be willing to try and fix it just for an easily moddable switch.
(Also needing to buy a switch this close to the switch 2 must be painful… all the savings that could have gone towards it…)
Best way to run an instance for cheap is on your own hardware, but I would only do that if you are experienced with self hosting since it would require port forwarding (unsecure if done wrong)