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

[NeilBrown]

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 23:26:11 +0100 "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller"
<hns at goldelico.com> wrote:

> 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.

I think I tried that.

> 
> > 
> > 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...

Presumably you developed it because that scratched your it.  But we all have
different itches..


> 
> 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/

Tried that.
It loads, but appears to configure the serial port to something that isn't
115200 or 57600.


> 
> 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.

That's what I thought.  And that is what the OMAP documentation says.
And I'm sure I experienced that before (though maybe only on the A3).

But I just cannot get it to work at the moment.
I tried creating a new VFAT filesystems and copying MLO on first, but it
doesn't work.
I tried downloading
 http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/production/20140728-gta04.dd.bz2

(like the README says) and using that, but it doesn't work.

What finally worked was I had the above image on the microSD card, I used the
old x-loader that seemed to work just enough and I loaded that and a
u-boot over serial, and then installed the x-loader and u-boot off the
microSD card into the NAND flash.  Now I can boot reliably again.
But my device just doesn't seem to want to boot off the microSD.

NeilBrown
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