[Gta04-owner] Device bricked/broken?

[Hermann Schwärzler]

Hi

On 03/11/2013 04:21 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
[...]
>> I tried serial-booting
>> (http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/page/SerialBoot/) but with
>> no success:
> 
> Maybe something with the serial port settings (parity?).

Yes. It looks like minicom was causing most of the problems with the
serial port. It seems to leave the port in a state that pserial has
problems with.
After restarting my laptop and switching to microcom I was able to boot
using pserial and ukermit.

[...]
> Just put the
> 
> 	http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/20121212-GTA04-Production/
> 
> on a SD card and insert that. Then, power on with AUX button pressed. This
> forces the boot ROM to ignore NAND and try the "MLO" on the SD card firstly.
> You may even try this with your current card to find out if you can still boot
> from SD.

Unfortunately this does not work. Neither with the
20130130-GTA04-last-2.6.32 card nor with the qtmoko SD card I am having.
I do not have a cardreader here so I am not able to make a
20121212-GTA04-Production at the moment (will do that tomorrow).


> If that does not work well, there may be a formatting problem with the FAT
> partition. Or the SD card is broken.

I don't think the cards are broken as they are working after a
successful serial boot (see below).

> To give you some more background what the Boot ROM does:
> 
> 1. try X-Loader from Flash
> 2. try MLO from SD-card (if inserted and available)
> 3. try boot over USB (this is the full speed device you can see)
> 4. try serial boot [...]

I am confused. What I am seeing is this: #1 and #2 do not work with my
device. But if I successfully send and start u-boot.bin via serial line
it starts the system from SD-card or from NAND. But if that works
shouldn't it work in the first place?
Or is this the "formatting problem with the FAT partition"? Does u-boot
have a "better" FAT support than the Boot ROM?

Next problem: This did work yesterday evening but today I am having
strange problems: transfer of u-boot.bin via ukermit hangs or pserial
does not see the ASIC ID. Probably an almost empty battery. I do not
have equipment here to measure its voltage...

Thank you for your help
Greetings
Hermann

PS: Just out of curiosity: how would booting over USB work (#3 on your
list)?