Fried 860

[jomo]

Ok, I am RMAing my 860 to Dynamism.  I'm getting the Blinking Mail-Light of Doom that has been reported by several other posters.  You know the issue: Suddenly Zaurus starts locking up repeatedly.  Can't do a soft reboot.  Hard reboots inexplicably fail.  Then, you insert battery and get a blinking Mail/Recharge Light.  My question: Is this a common problem?  Are there any known causes?  I'm hoping maybe somebody with Trisoft (Marc?) or Shirtpocket or Conics has some statistics.  That might determine whether or not I keep the Zaurus when/if I get it back.  Thing is, I really like(d) my Zaurus.  It had the longest battery-life of all the PDAs I ever owned.  I'm back to using my Sony, and the battery's a third-gone after checking appointments a few times.  But I can't have something that's in for repairs all the time.    So may be getting one of those new Palm Tungsten Xs when they hit the shelves in May.  (Bigger battery than Sony and built-in Microdrive, like C3000).  I'd really like to keep it.  Thanks to Anton Maslovsky and the Cacko Team, I was starting to enjoy it more than the Sony, and that had been my favorite.  If there is something I was doing that caused it to croak, I'd gladly stop, but I'm afraid the answer is that it's a random quality issue.

Phooey.

[TRIsoft]

Phooey,

dead and unbrickable units are not just rare, we had only
two until now.

Please give us some more information:
Are you really unable to access the Diag-Menu ?
Have you tried accessing the Diag with "FN"+"D"+"M" (other
procedure like in our manual) ?
If you can access the Diag, what happens if you try a NAND
restore ?
<RestOfAudiencePleaseIgnore>
If the NAND restore fails, and your unit is already a brick,
try the following:
Get into Diag. Start "NAND Erase", immediately after that
start a NAND-Restore. Never lose power during this procedure.
Is it working now ?
</RestOfAudiencePleaseIgnore>

For all these steps you should take a look in our manual and
use the NAND and Backup-Sets from our site:
SL-C860 downloads

Until now we had exactly one SL-C860 with a bad NAND chip
that was unable to restore anything. This one needed a new
mainboard from SHARP Japan.
We also had two reports of customers who bought their units
from another vendor with the same problem, both were SL-C750.

Fingers crossed,

Marc

[Optogeek]

I am one of the unfortunates that had the blinking mail light problem.  It does seem to signify a bad nand chip.  Watching the output from the serial cable you see the p2rom (the hardwired bit) trying and failing to load the data from the nand chip.

My solution sell for parts and buy a new one...  I love my Zaurus too much

[jomo]

Thanks Marc.  I'm at work, but I'll try your suggestions when I get home.  I do, unfortunately, think it is as Optogeek suggested - a bad NAND chip.  Interestingly, it developed an issue about a month ago where the IPK installer would just inexplicably fail.  Thanks to the Cacko people, I was able to get IPK up and running again by clearing out the 'failure' entry in the config files, but I never got a straight answer as to why IPK Installer failed in the first place.  I suspected bad NAND, but Dynamism basically blew me off, suggesting that I just reinstall their original configuration and all my troubles would go away.  Failure to install/modify disk-contents are the first sign that an HDD is going south, and this is why I suspected bad NAND.  Now, it appears I may have confirmation.  I'm gratified, though, to hear that this is a fairly rare occurence.  I'll try to get it running again tonight, but if I can't, it'll become Dynamism's problem.  Hopefully, they can get a new mobo installed if necessary.  Or, maybe (a pipe-dream) they won't, and I'll get upgraded to a C1K.    LoL!!!!!

[jomo]

Thanks guys for your help.  Zaurus is on her way back to Dynamism.  She's definitely a brick now.  I tried your suggestions, Marc, but a brick she remained.  I could get the service menu to come up, and I could go through the motions of flashing the ROM, but she won't boot.    You guys have made me feel a lot lot better about keeping it when it gets back from its sojourn to Japan for new innards.