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

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 18.03.2015 um 09:17 schrieb Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns at goldelico.com>:

> 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.

Ok,
it turns out that the 20150316-gta04.dd.bz2  is based on

makesd -v latest gta04

	The current “latest” version referenced here was 

http://download.goldelico.com/gta04-rootfs/20141006-GTA04-beta-3.17.0-wheezy-7.6/

and it appears that its MLO/x-loader.flash files are somehow broken (misconfigured?) in
a subtle way.

Therefore I have switched the “latest” to

	http://download.goldelico.com/gta04-rootfs/20150209-GTA04-beta-3.19.0-wheezy-7.7/

and there I now get as expected (depending on pressing AUX):

> Texas Instruments X-Loader (NAND) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Feb  9 2015 - 14:31:45)
> OMAP3630/3730-GP ES2.1
> Board detected: GTA04A4
> Memory: Micron MCP 256MB/bank
> Loading u-boot.bin from nand
> 
> 
> U-Boot 2011.03-rc1-00967-g671281f-dirty (Feb 09 2015 - 14:33:01)
> 
> OMAP3630/3730-GP ES2.1, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max CPU Clock 800 Mhz
> GTA04 + LPDDR/NAND
> I2C:   ready
> DRAM:  512 MiB
> NAND:  512 MiB
> MMC:   OMAP SD/MMC: 0

—— power interrupted and rebooted with AUX pressed ——

> tذb$U   @D  @
> 
> Texas Instruments X-Loader (MLO) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Feb  9 2015 - 14:32:20)
> OMAP3630/3730-GP ES2.1
> Board detected: GTA04A4
> Memory: Micron MCP 256MB/bank
> Reading FAT boot sector
> Loading u-boot.bin (296352 bytes) from mmc/sd

So now it should work again as it should with makesd.

Updating the .dd.bz2 files needs some hours (runs makesd in a qemu image) but is
already started. So please check

	http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/production/

Sorry for this bug and providing outdated files on the server,
Nikolaus


PS: here is a simple test:

 fgrep ‘X-Loader (MLO)’ /media/boot/MLO /media/boot/x-load.flash 

should only report MLO to match

 fgrep ‘X-Loader (NAND)' /media/boot/MLO /media/boot/x-load.flash 

should only report x-load.flash to match