[Gta04-owner] Help with a bricked GTA04...

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

HI,

Am 14.03.2015 um 22:35 schrieb NeilBrown <neilb at suse.de>:

> On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 19:50:32 +0100 "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller"
> <hns at goldelico.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Neil,
>> did you succeeed?
> 
> I didn't have time to play yesterday, so I haven't tried anything you
> suggested yet.

Maybe even simpler is to use this instruction (although not the latest x-loader/u-boot):

http://download.goldelico.com/gta04-u-boot/production/

and follow the README.

> 
> Prior to that I managed to get the x-loader from 
>  http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardRecovery#UART_recovery
> working, though it inexplicably set the baud rate to 57600.
> 
> Anyway I now that that x-loader and a u-boot installed in the NAND flash and
> my phone boots.

Well, sometimes I ask myself why we have developed and adapted, tested and
improved the complete boot system for the GTA04 to make it almost fail-safe,
if people prefer to try something else...

You were very fortunate that it did work at all.

For serial loading you should try to use our s-load.bin (I haven’t used it since 2011
so I don’t know if it still works):

http://download.goldelico.com/gta04-u-boot/unstable/recovery/

For the records (before people think that the GTA04 can only be unbricked
by serial booting):

If the MLO is correctly written to the SD card it will unbrick a GTA04 by pressing
the AUX button.

> However resume-from-suspend doesn't work any more if the USB cable is not
> attached.  This is with my 3.7 kernel which has been working reliably for
> months.  So the x-loader must set something up which the kernel assumes, and
> the old x-loader doesn't set it the same way.  So still more to investigate.

Yes… The GTA04 boot loaders may have differences (because they are based
on some BeagleBoard snapshot) and I strongly suggest that you use the one we
provide and nothing else.

Otherwise we will even run into a compatibility nightmare if you upstream things to
kernel.org that unexpectedly rely on a different boot system.

> 
>>> But you might not even recognize that the MLO on the SD card is broken, as
>>> long as an X-Loader can start from NAND.
>>> 
> 
> I suspect that is exactly what was happening.  I assumed I was booting entire
> from SD card, but infact the MLO on the SD was never being used, so one I
> accidentally corrupted the x-loader on NAND, it all stopped working.

Yes, that is the most plausible theory. It simply skipped the MLO when pressing
the AUX button and therefore did not boot from the SD card.

So formatting a fresh bootable SD card (with the latest gta04 boot loader) will
solve all these issues.

> 
> Thank.  I'll let you know what I have it all figured out.
> 
> NeilBrown

BR,
Nikolaus