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[Foxdie]

A little background first:

When I got my C760 I put the Sashz X11 ROM on it but probably due to my own error and restoring user partitions multiple times I could no longer log in as root even after a full flash.

Then I flashed the Cacko C7x0 Qtopia ROM and for a time it was good (a cookie to who can name the film that last part came from!) but when I started listening to mp3's with it (well a SINGLE mp3 of about 64MB in length, I like Trance sets) I started having problems with just that.

Typical example of the problem would be me walking to work every morning, I start to walk up the hill and after about 7 or so minutes the mp3 will seem to stop (at this point the zaurus is in my pocket with the LCD off). About 20 or so seconds later I'll hear the Qtopia startup sound play so I'm guessing that something is crashing Qtopia itself but not the entire PDA.

At first I thought it was because I had the Music Player set as "Fast Load" but disabling that didn't solve the problem. Then I thought it might be the unit trying to go into suspend but I halved the time it took to go into suspend and it didn't make a difference.

Then when on IRC talking to a friend who has a 5x00 he suggested it might be bad RAM or something so I booted into the Service Menu's and did a NAND Bad Count test, this is the result:



Notice how it says 2 bad blocks in the first NAND section.

I then did a RAM Test (Full) and then a RAM Write&Read Rpt test but those seems okay.

I then did a NAND Flash Read test and it says the following:

CODE

NAND Flash Read





 verifying 1...

   adr = 8000000

   Bad Block 2->8192



 success.

I've no idea what that means. I tried a NAND Flash Full Erase and this is what I got:

CODE

NAND Flash Full Erase



 erasing...8



 Total Bad Block = 2





 ERROR! bad b 8192->2

 code=(201)

And last of all I tried a NAND Flash (Full)

CODE

NAND Flash (Full)



 checking ecc... OK.

 writing all 1...

   adr = 8000000

   Bad Block Num = 2

 verifying 1...

   adr = 8000000

   Bad Block Num = 2

 writing all 2...

   adr = 8000000

   Bad Block Num = 2

 verifying 2...

   adr = 8000000

   Bad Block Num = 2

 checking number...OK.

 success.

Anyone able to suggest what I can do? Please keep in mind that I live in the UK and I bought this C760 from a guy in Japan on Ebay and I can't afford to ship it back to him for replacement right now.

[Foxdie]

And now my Zaurus won't even start up. Green light flashes as soon as I attach the battery.

*whimpers*

[Foxdie]

Thankyou to Conics for a full NAND Flash Backup

[ScottYelich]

That worked and fixed it?

Scott

[zbones]

You have to be very careful what you run from the service menu :?

For instance, stay away from anything that mentions ageing.

Some of these menus like the ageing one are designed to test the unit by subjecting it to x years of use in an afternoon.

Is it back up and working? if not there is a solution that may work, but I will have to find where I read about it first.

Hopefully after a full nand erase, a nand restore should do the trick. you certainly won't be able to do a standard flash

As for what the output means, then who knows? You are the first person I have heard of who has dared to run these routines.

The output of these commands doesn't seem to be documented anywhere outside of sharps lab.

Peter,

The board has their collective fingers crossed for you mate

[Foxdie]

Completely working again

[zbones]

Completely working again

I am glad to hear that .

Lots of devices have bad blocks, it's how those bad blocks are handled that is important.

If the device knows that the block is bad and doesn't attempt to use it, then there is no problem, you will just have a filesystem that is either one block smaller than the norm or that block will be substituted for "slack space". Some devices use "slack space" which is an area of the disk/memory that is reserved for "replacing" bad blocks and is totally transparent to the operating system above it.

I do not know how the zaurus handles bad blocks, I am talking about generic/standard ways of handling bad blocks here.

If the device is trying to read/write to a bad block that has either not been "ignored" or "substituted" then you will get corruption of your filesystem, which would normally end in error city on boot up :cry:

I presume making a "perfect" chip is similar to making a perfect hard disk surface, (ie nearly impossible at a price that is affordable).

All this depends on what level the zaurus is checking it's memory, if it is low level (ie physical) then you probably have nothing to worry about. If the checks are being done at a higher level, ie after any substiution may have been carried out then you may have a problem, but I think this likely to result in either a totally unusable system or constant and severe corruption to you data.

Does anybody know how the zaurus deals with bad blocks?

Peter.

[havoc]

Glad I found this thread. Here's to hoping someone will send me a full NAND Flash Backup for my SL-5600!

[Foxdie]

Glad I found this thread.  Here's to hoping someone will send me a full NAND Flash Backup for my SL-5600!

Have you tried googling for "Zaurus 5600 NAND Flash Backup" ?

[bsdvodsky]

I've been using Kathrin RC3 for awhile with just the minor annoyances. But all this crap began after issuing a 'halt' while in console out of matchbox. After that I couldnt power up. Following some threads in the forum I found foxie's D+B and doing 'shutdown -r now'. That did reboot the Z into Kathrin, but after I suspend(or powered down) I would get the same problem.

Now, I cant even use D+B. Green light flashes as soon as I attach the battery and both lights flash if I attach the ac. Checking out the Service Menu, my RAM is ok but my NAND flash has a bad block.

CODE

NAND Bad Count
  Blk    Init   After Total
  -------------------------
   1        1        0        1
   2        0        0        0
   3        0        0        0
   4        0        0        0
   5        0        0        0
   6        0        0        0
   7        0        0        0
   8        0        0        0
  -------------------------
  Total Bad Block = 1

-------

NAND Flash Full Erase
  erasing...8
  Total Bad Block = 1
  success.

-------

NAND Flash (Full)

checking ecc... OK
writing all 1...
  adr = 8000000
  Bad Block Num = 1
verifying 1...
  adr = 8000000
  Bad Block Num = 1
writing all 2...
  adr = 8000000
  Bad Block Num = 1
verifying 2...
  adr = 8000000
  Bad Block Num = 1
checking number...OK.
success.

I've attempted to do a NAND Flash Restore using the systc860.dbk from www.trisoft.de but I am having trouble with my PQI 512MB CF. Any advice, hints, success stories would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Brian the frustrated

ps. DONT USE HALT!

[bsdvodsky]

Well, I successfully did a 'NAND Flash Restore' using SL-C750-C860-nand-backup-en.zip from conics.net and I am still having the same problems as before.

Little extra on my situation:

CODE

NAND CheckSum
   Block             Sum1     Sum2       M
   ----------------------------------------
   MAINTE   : Ver.1.20
                     2b9c     2b9c  OK  OK
   DIAG     : Ver.1.20
                     317a     317a  OK  OK
   KERNEL2  : Ver.1.20
                     0460     0460  OK  OK
   FLSYS2   : Ver.1.20
                     5a5b     5a5b  OK  OK
   KERNEL1  : Ver.1.20
                     0460     0460  OK  OK
   ROFLSYS  : Ver.1.20
                     d824     d824  OK  OK
   PRESET   : Ver.1.20
                     9c79     a6d8  NG  OK
   INFO     : Ver.1.20
                     4d47     4d47  OK  OK
   ----------------------------------------
   Total  :8242     8ca1
   Master :1.20                    8242 NG

thanks!

[bsdvodsky]

I got it working shortly after that last post, just did 'Reset' in the service menu and hit the power button. Now everything seems to be working! cheers to ZUG!

[bsdvodsky]

here's an update.

After I restored by Nand backup, I loaded Kathrin RC5. The problem I am now experiencing is that some programs either run awkwardly or not at all. The device in question is a 860 I purchased from Japan. I've only had this thing for about two months, and have only used it couple weeks due to all the problems that erupted after using 'halt'. I am trying to evaluate my options... all the while getting increasingly frustrated with this $600 paper weight.

[dz]

here's an update.

After I restored by Nand backup, I loaded Kathrin RC5. The problem I am now experiencing is that some programs either run awkwardly or not at all. The device in question is a 860 I purchased from Japan. I've only had this thing for about two months, and have only used it couple weeks due to all the problems that erupted after using 'halt'. I am trying to evaluate my options... all the while getting increasingly frustrated with this $600 paper weight.

Have you tried out Cacko rom? pdaXrom might just not be for you. They're two different roms for two different purposes. pdaXrom is if you want a full linux laptop in your palm, while Cacko is (in my opinion) much better suited for actual PDA use.

[bsdvodsky]

well.. pdaxrom is pretty much exactly what I want. Its just aweome to have the same programs running on your machine at work, home, laptop, and on your hand. Unfortunetly as awesome as this is, I am unable to run some of them (ie. rox, firefox, thunderbird as well as the theme manager, wireless applet and gnumeric to name a few) from the built in flash.

I am not sure if this in in the works or not...
But I think the community should start working toward a configurable bootloader like grub or XOSL in concept. Something we can all install in the Nand flash once and will allow us to boot off partitions on a SD/CF card. SD/CF sizes are getting larger while the cost is getting cheaper. The Nand flash inside all of our Z's will eventually wear out, leaving us to either repair or upgrade. Both of which are costly. But If we can fully boot off a SD or CF card the only thing to wear out is the card. In which case you could just throw it away and buy another. Updating a distro(roms wouldn't be an adequate name at this point, imho) would be done on a PC, downloading a tarball and running a shell script to install to a SD/CF partition.
Now imagine having a couple SD/CF cards with different distros. Better yet, picture a 2gig SD with a couple partitions with different distros. =)