Bootloader Problem, Is My Cl4 Bricked?

[juggler]

Hi,

after fumbling around with oe and bitbake I finally managed to build
an opie-imag, that is small enough (< 16mb) and hopefully provides
the correct kernel command line (i.e. parittion definitions for 16 MB flash).
But as it turns I could even flash this image due to bootloader problems.

Since Documentation about any bootloader and 16 MB simpads seems
to be non-existent I had the following choices.

Install bloader.2.5.3 from opensimpad.org, which is specifically labelled
as not compatibel with cl4  

or

directly flash blupdater.img without erasing flash before.

I decided to try the last version, it looks like this was a failure.

The bootloader boots as expected and after an unsuccesfull
attempt to flash an img from cf (hda1) falls back to a prompt.
So far this is OK and expected, the problem is that the
prompt is not reacting to any inputs, effectively making
it impossible to do anything (esp. flashing something over
serial).

I have no Idea what to try now, besides using JTAG or soldering
an pcmcia slot, so that I can place a flash image on /hda1.

For neither of the two options I have the necessary hardware at hand.

Even worse I have still no idea, what went wrong, respectively how
to do it right.

If not erasing the flash was the source of the problem, then
I would have to install the 2.5.3 bootloader, which sounds not
like something that could work. But if this was not the problem,
what else can go wrong (the blupdater.img file is OK and
serial upload seemed to work).

As far as I have read in this forum several people in this
forum have managed to get bootloader running on a cl4,
so how did you do that?

       Sascha

[Berend]

As far as I have read in this forum several people in this
forum have managed to get bootloader running on a cl4,
so how did you do that?

I'm pretty sure I took the same route (among others).

I've just tried it again and this works fine:
upgrade from tsp_hpc2000eng (the original image I believe) to blupdater.img:
 - serload blupdater.img and reset
 - penguin on screen, installs new bootldr
 - reset after msg on screen, screen fades away ugly, reset again
 - boot promp now shows on serial, no response to input/no echo
 - restart minicom, works fine now

from my experience the flashing of the bootloader doesn't give any problems on a CL4 as long as you stay away from the update releases (2.5.3, ...) when you're already using the HH.orgs bootldr.

[juggler]

As far as I have read in this forum several people in this
forum have managed to get bootloader running on a cl4,
so how did you do that?

I'm pretty sure I took the same route (among others).

I've just tried it again and this works fine:
upgrade from tsp_hpc2000eng (the original image I believe) to blupdater.img:
 - serload blupdater.img and reset
 - penguin on screen, installs new bootldr
 - reset after msg on screen, screen fades away ugly, reset again
 - boot promp now shows on serial, no response to input/no echo
 - restart minicom, works fine now

from my experience the flashing of the bootloader doesn't give any problems on a CL4 as long as
you stay away from the update releases (2.5.3, ...) when you're already using the HH.orgs bootldr.
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I think the only difference to my attempt seems to be, that I started from an opensimpad 0.8.1
with a booloader verison 2.5.1 instead for directly form wince (which would have been
a german version anyway).
The only problem was that I could not enter anything on the boot prompt, so the
bootloader seemed to run fine up to this point.
We tried to fix this using jtag, but it looks like we finally managed to kill the simpad
on a hardware basis (i.e. no reaction at all and the strongarm gets burning hot...).

Interestingly I have found a thread on the old opensimpad forum, where somebody
claims, that he has succesfully flashed the 2.5.3 bootloader on an CL4, so maybe
this would have been the better way.

Thanks for your help anyway.

      Sascha

P.S. I'll post some more information about the jtag trouble in a separate thread.