OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => Sharp Zaurus => Model Specific Forums => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Cxx0 General discussions => Topic started by: tobias on March 11, 2004, 03:48:50 am

Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 11, 2004, 03:48:50 am
I was in the Service menu (the one you get by pressing D+M at powerup), the Cursor was on \"Full nand erase\", and i presses OK instead ov cancel. Now all i get is a flashing mail light, my Z won\'t switch on. Is there any help, or have i jut ruined a lot of money ?

Please help me. anybody, tell me there is a way to restore the NAND flash backup
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 11, 2004, 04:36:29 am
Can you still get into the D+M menu? if so you can do a nand restore, be certain to download the correct nand backup for your machine.

If not can you get to the japanese menu used for flashing?

If neither of these menus want to work, I think you can still get it back using a recovery tool, I will look for the link if you are still struggling.

Peter.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 11, 2004, 05:22:07 am
I can get to neither of them, unfortunately. I\'m so glad here is hope for my poor C700. Can you post that link ?

Thank you very much in advance

Tobias
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Foxdie on March 11, 2004, 07:24:22 am
I wish there was a way to recover from the Computer via USB instead of from the CF card. I\'ve done a similar thing (AGAIN) and although I can get into the developer menu I don\'t have a 256MB or greater CF card.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 11, 2004, 08:04:36 am
a guy working for www.trisoft.de promised zo dend me a recovery kit via e-mail, which can be flashed and the menus become acessible agan, so that i can restore my NAND backup (luckily i havve one.). He said that world be about 5 MB.

Sorry for the X-Post, didn\'t know where to put it and i was derperade. I just got it some days ago and thougt I already broke it.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Stubear on March 11, 2004, 09:26:02 am
Quote
I wish there was a way to recover from the Computer via USB instead of from the CF card. I\'ve done a similar thing (AGAIN) and although I can get into the developer menu I don\'t have a 256MB or greater CF card.

Do you have a 256+ SD card? If so you can do a NAND restore from SD by removing the CF card - if any CF card is present then it will try and use that and fail if it can\'t find the file. If no CF is present it tries SD before it fails

Stu
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 11, 2004, 04:19:03 pm
I posted my response before I went to work and I was in a rush otherwise I would have posted the link.

Quote
a guy working for www.trisoft.de promised zo dend me a recovery kit via e-mail, which can be flashed and the menus become acessible agan, so that i can restore my NAND backup (luckily i havve one.). He said that world be about 5 MB.  

If you don\'t get the file then see this link, about halfway down is a post from klaus (kweidner).  As his post says, this is a LAST RESORT, the link is old, but hopefully the info is still current.

http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic....er=asc&start=15 (http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic.php?t=96&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15)

I haven\'t tried this, and I hope I don\'t have to.  read the whole thread before you try anything and make sure you understand the implications etc before you do anything.

Peter.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 11, 2004, 04:24:32 pm
Oh,

And post back if you get it working and which method worked for you.

this could help others in the future.

Peter.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 12, 2004, 02:24:17 am
I cheked that link, looks jst like the stuff the guy promised to send me. According to that README, that\'s exactly what i need. I\'ll test it this afternoon, as soon as i can get my hans on my brother\'s digicam, to put the files on a CF-Card.

I\'ll set up a homepage on this whole recovery, once I get my Z to work again. If I can brick my new toy, propably some other people will as well .... Einstein said:\" Two things are infinitive: The universe and the stupidity of mankind, but I\'m not sure about the universe \"
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Foxdie on March 12, 2004, 09:41:10 am
I tried the recovery thing and it didn\'t work for me, and unfortunately the only storage I have for my Zaurus is a 64MB CF card.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 12, 2004, 12:25:38 pm
Didn\'t work for me as well. I\'ll send it to trisoft, the have a cable to monitor the process on a serial console. The two LEDs both are on, which seems to be a good sign, but wehsn the flashing is done, one of them should turn off. This didn\'t happen for the last hour or so ...
:-(

Tobias
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 12, 2004, 05:08:43 pm
foxdie,
if you were in Leeds I would nip round with my card and serial cable, but birmingham is too far, and I\'ve seen how you treat paperclips  

tobias Germany is also out of the question unless you pay for the ticket  

I guess there may still be a small chance it has worked enough to re-load a backup, but leave it overnight. Strange things have been known to happen when they are left for a while flashing away (oooer missus).

Also have you flashed anything using your card before?  Was the card freshly fat16 formatted.  Not all cf cards are capable of being used to flash software to the zaurus, even if they work ok for everyday use.

Without the serial cable you will not see any error messages like potential cf read errors.

Clutchin at straws a little here, but other things that have been known to work have been :-

Remove the battery for a long period, and then retry flashing.

Ensure the battery is fully charged first, sometimes difficult if the zaurus won\'t charge the battery.

Pray to the god of sillicon.

Peter
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Greg2 on March 12, 2004, 07:30:43 pm
Quote
I cheked that link, looks jst like the stuff the guy promised to send me. According to that README, that\'s exactly what i need. I\'ll test it this afternoon, as soon as i can get my hans on my brother\'s digicam, to put the files on a CF-Card.  
tobias

I\'m not to sure about formatting and transferring files with the digicam? Can\'t you borrow a card reader to do that before shipping it back?

I only ask this because my camera rarely excepts the formatting of my desktop. I almost always have to reformat card before use in camera.

Greg
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 13, 2004, 05:21:51 am
HI Guys !
I already used that setup (Digicam, SD-Card) to flash Openzaurus on my Z, so that should\'t be the problem.

I left it for many hours, still no response, no diag menu, no flash menu :-((

Ringt now, the package is on its way to Hannover, to trisoft. The have a serial cable (and a JTAG-interface), and they were very nice at the phone, so we\'ll see.

thank you all, for yor help...
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Foxdie on March 13, 2004, 08:29:00 am
I definately tried reformatting it as fat16 but it\'s still no-go. I need to do a full nand flash restore. Why the hell does it need to be 2 megs too big to fit on a 128 MB CF card I don\'t know

I\'m gonna save up and get a 256MB CF card from ebay, they\'re only £35 ($50)
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 13, 2004, 10:28:02 am
I got my 512mb cf card for £50 on ebay.  I did get a little lucky though
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: tobias on March 16, 2004, 02:25:36 pm
Quote
HI Guys !
Ringt now, the package is on its way to Hannover, to trisoft. The have a serial cable (and a JTAG-interface), and they were very nice at the phone, so we\'ll see.

I got a call this afternoon, my Z is alive !
Here is what they did:
erase the whole memory
restore the flash menu from a Lexar Professional 512 MB Compact Flash (using klaus weidener\'s emergency kit   http://pocketworkstation.org/files/recover/ (http://pocketworkstation.org/files/recover/) ) i tried this as well, using a noname-CF-card, maybe that was the problem
Nand restore to original state
Flash it with openzaurus
Ship it to me ;-)
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 16, 2004, 03:55:21 pm
Excellent,
Too many times you hear of dead units. I am sure most of the time they are recovered one way or another but people don\'t allways post back to let you know.

So thanks for letting us know.

Peter
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: adrian on March 29, 2004, 11:45:43 am
Any ideas how did they \"erase the whole memory\" ?
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Foxdie on March 29, 2004, 11:52:13 am
zbones, is there any small chance you can get to nottingham this weekend? I am going there on Saturday 3rd for my birthday party and I\'l be bringing my zaurus along with me.

I\'ve tried with 2 different 256MB CF cards now, and it fails both times. I don\'t know what the error is as I don\'t have a serial lead, nor do I know how to jerry rig one (sashz said it\'s not possible unless I have TTL to RS232 level converters).
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 30, 2004, 02:53:46 pm
Quote
zbones, is there any small chance you can get to nottingham this weekend?

Not really, I have already planned my weekend.

Quote
I am going there on Saturday 3rd for my birthday party

Spooky, it\'s mine on Friday  

Expansys don\'t seem to sell them anymore either, they only have the sharp one at £50 which is a totally mad price.

I would post it to you, but I use it daily to sync to my nt4 box at work (no usb)
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Foxdie on March 30, 2004, 03:15:11 pm
You\'re joking!!!

Although my party is on the 3rd my birthday is the second
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: zbones on March 30, 2004, 07:20:21 pm
Even more spooky, although I recon that I am a few years older :?

We also share a birthday with Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama/shakespears sister,  but she is two years older than me.

That should be enough of a clue.
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Foxdie on March 31, 2004, 03:36:37 am
Well, happy birthday for Friday
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Abichai on April 02, 2004, 10:42:06 am
Tobias wrote:
\"Ringt now, the package is on its way to Hannover, to trisoft. The have a serial cable (and a JTAG-interface), and they were very nice at the phone, so we\'ll see.\"

Any news from the guys at trisoft? From what you say, I understand that a JTAG direct programming would always be possible whatever the brick state of the Zaurus. But isn\'t there some non-disclosure issue with Sharp to get the JTAG stuff?
Title: Full nand erase
Post by: Abichai on April 02, 2004, 10:48:18 am
Ooopps. sorry there.
I was a little too quick in posting my message before reading all the way through the topic.
Anyway, it would still be useful to know exactly what has been done to your Z:
What cable and software did they use, and what for?