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

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi Neil,

Am 18.03.2015 um 08:20 schrieb NeilBrown <neilb at suse.de>:

> 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..

Well, it itches me if something is not fail-safe and wanted to avoid the beagle
board situation where 50% of all user requests were about boot loader problems.

This heavily influences the reputation of a project. E.g. being “difficult to use” etc.

So it was not just some itches but self-defense :)

> 
> 
>> 
>> 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.

Well, as said it might be buggy and is not well tested.

> 
> 
>> 
>> 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.

Hm. That is strange.

> I tried downloading
> http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/production/20140728-gta04.dd.bz2

I have tried with the latest version 20150316-gta04.dd.bz2 and indeed
it does not switch.

> 
> (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.

If flashed correctly (NAND and SD), the first message from X-Loader and MLO
should differ (and reflect the AUX button status). But I always get “MLO” reported.

So there might be a bug in the x-loader/MLO build script we have. Something
which only becomes visible if the X-Loader in NAND is broken (and this
is a little difficult to test :)

Thanks for reporting this problem. I will check.

BR,
Nikolaus