Please Help! My C1000 Is Bricked!

[duhbert]

Hi....

My C1000 is really short-lived.  Today when it was booting up it was locked in the Sharp screen, after a numerous reboots and trials, I open the battery cover, set the switch to 'in use' and then prick the recessed reset button.   Then it was a total blackout.  I plugged in the charger and there was not even charging light.  I referred to Trisoft's startup guide and tried to access the DM mode, but nothing happened.  My C1000 just went dead.  Even afte charging it for an hour, there was still no charging light.  I tested the battery and it was not empty.
What happened to my precious?  Was the circuit fried?  What do I do about that?  I know the last resort is to send it back to Japan for repair (my Japanese bought it for me from Hyperfactory in Tokyo and it came with a one-year warranty).   But before sending it away, does anyone know any method to wake it up from coma?  Thanks!

(SIGH....)

[benito]

The D+M thingy is really fiddly. Keep trying - it took me about 5-6 tries to get it to work but it _does_ work...
Cheers,
Ben

[duhbert]

I've tried to get into DM more than a dozen times, but to no avail.

Supposedly to get into the DM menu at least there must be power supply, but the charging light has never come back again since the Z fell into coma.

I begin to suspect this is some hardware failure.  Now trying to contact my Japanese friend and arranging to send it to him and to ask him to do me a favor to contact the shop/Sharp.   Poor me.  

[Jacknife]

I had a similar situation on my C3000 within the first week of receipt...  To make a long story (below) short, I think I just needed to let my Zaurus charge for about 9 hours before attempting to turn it on again.

----------------------------------
I was playing around with my Zaurus for several hours one day - installing and removing various IPKs in an attempt to customize the box.  I decided to reboot my Zaurus to make sure the changes took effect.  Upon restart,  my Z hung at the first splash screen and wouldn't fully reboot.  I decided to use the reset button to purge the current memory state and reboot - after doing this my Z wouldn't even turn on.

I also attempted to charge my Zaurus for about an hour, removed and reinserted the battery, etc  to no avail.  After several hours of frustration past my normal bed time, I decided to give up for the night and left my Z plugged in.  I woke up about 4 hours later, and there were still no lights on my Zaurus while it was plugged in - still wouldn't turn on, etc.  I had to run some errands that morning and decided to leave my Z plugged in at home while I was gone.

The amber recharge/power LED was lit on my Zaurus when I arrived back home about 5 hours later.  I tried turning it on, and it booted normally. I've had no problems with my Zaurus since that time, so I'm assuming that I must have reset my Zaurus when the battery was critically low.  This is just a guess since I wasn't paying attention to the battery indicator icon.

[duhbert]

Thanks again....

I am really surprised to see your story -- ALMOST the same here.  I goy my C1000 about a week ago.  I charged it for about 10 hours before the first use.  Then I tried to install the packages and ... (long story short) the booting was locked up at the Sharp screen with a floating # cursor below.  I logged in as root and reboot, but rebooting simply stopped at the same spot.  After spending a whole day reading thru the posts here, I found I am not alone to have experienced this problem on Cxk.  

Anyway, today I was also away from my C1000 with AC plugged in for about 10 hours, hoping to see the orange light come back (that's exactly the same thing you did).  BUT, I got no luck in it.  Still total blackout.  No charging light.  No DM menu or Flashmenu.  I could do nothing but stare at the dark screen which looks like a black hole to me now...

I have also taken out the battery to test its voltage again.  It does has a decent amont of power left (I guess 80% as far as I can tell from my friend's voltage meter), let alone empty or discharged.

So more and more evidence goes for the theory that my precious C1000 was bricked/toasted/fried.  And the most probable cause of death would be a dead circuit inside the body.  Looks like a major surgery at its Japan home is inevitable...  

Consider myself unlucky and an utterly victim of my ignorance of linux/zaurus knowledge.   Completely demoralized...

[benito]

You may have already read all about this, but just in case:

I remember my Zaurus being totally dead as well (also about two weeks after I bought it).  There was no light - absolutely nothing.... After about 24 hrs of fiddling around I finally managed to get a prompt but only after I'd accessed the service menus as follows:

Total power off (no battery or AC).

Press D+M (I think D+P works as well but you get a slightly different menu), hold down firm & attach AC while holding keys down for 3-5 seconds ... this should get you into the service menu. You can do a lot here but I wouldn't do anything if I were you - just detach power again.

Then (while AC still detached): press D+B and hold down firmly while inserting battery and locking battery switch - then switch the unit on (while still holding keys) and you should get the SHARP boot screen and console login. This last thing is what I had to try a number of times - getting into the service menus was easier.

Only after doing the above steps did I get my yellow charging light back - I just typed "reboot" from the console session and the thing worked again.

Of course you have a C1000 so it could be slightly different...

Good luck,
Ben

[benito]

....just remembered - TRIsoft also said they'd seen situations in which they'd have to leave the unit without a battery for up to 1 hour to accept the D+B trick...

[Jacknife]

If benito's suggestion doesn't work, then I thought of something that may help if you're not afraid to lose any personal data on your Zaurus... (This is something that I didn't try.)

You may want to remove all power from your Zaurus for about 2-3 hours... If your Z is stuck in or or suspend mode with a blank screen, then this should help discharge any powered circuits.   After waiting with the power disconnected, try pressing the reset switch and waiting about 2 more minutes before reinserting the battery and plugging it back in.

Please let us know if any of our suggestions help un-brick your Zaurus.  If you figure out something different that works, then I'd be interesting in knowing what you did.

[duhbert]

Thank you very much indeed, benito and Jacknife.

I am leaving the C1000 completely detached from power supply for the whole day, and then I'll be trying the suggested CPR technique on my beloved-but-unfortunate vegetable Akita.

Certainly I will let you know the result, be it good (pray to Tux?) or bad (oh dun zuck me like this....)

[rob_figlabs]

I have a 3000 that is bricked, but I have a charging light. A colleague suspended it from the Qt menu and it failed to come back to life since. I tried leaving it unplugged and batteryless overnight and then using it the next day, but nothing, no service menu, no D+M action, nothing. Not sure what else to do other than send it back.

[Curious Aardvark]

Hmm, looks like suspending these things is a real bad idea. I know on my 860 I had to disable suspend (just extend shut off time to something improbable) to stop it cutting out. but nothing as bad as this. Wonder if the reason the c1000 is so much cheaper than the 860 has anything to do with it ? New/dodgy circuit design ?
I was thinking of buying one as a spare in case anything happened to my 860 - don't think I will now :-)

A quickie on accessing the service menus - mine only worked with the access/power switch in the off position ie: the opposite to that stated in all the guides - got to be worth a try :-)

[duhbert]

I remember before the disaster happend to the C1000, I followed the info here to attempt to get out of the reboot lockup:

http://www.dushka.co.uk/icewing/articles/?Article=7

And I keyed this in:

Code: [Select]

mkfs.ext2 /dev/mtdblock1

mount -t ext2 -o sync /dev/mtdblock1 /home
cd /
tar xf /root/.home_default.tar
cd /home/system
tar xf /root/.var_default.tar
oncheck -clear

reboot
Did I do something awful here?  Thanks for your wisdom again.

[daemon1]

I had a similar prob, i was in terminal and out of habbit, i typed halt in the prompt.... bad idea!

didnt use the Z for the day, and went to use it the next night, and it was dead... wouldnt powerup, no charge light nothing....

so i removed the battery, pressed reset... still nothing, so out of desparation.... discovered that it had powered up and drained the battery ...

to get it back up.... i just had to leave it charged for a  couple of hours, before it was able to boot again.... seems it needs a minimum amount of charge at all times..

later discovered a prob, it just wouldn't suspend! everything i tried pressed the off button, it would intantly power up again... that's what drained the battery... the prob was the suspend-resume.ipk... it wouldnt let it go to sleep... removed that and all is good again...

[duhbert]

Bad news: absolutely nothing ever happened whatever suggested methods I tried on the C1000.

It's dead.

... Even worse I've been trying to contact my friend in Japan for a week but he didn't respond to me...  

Shall I just throw it in the trash bin and choose not to use zaurus anymore?  I just can't imagine how come such a device is so fragile and vulnerable.

As I am in Europe, I just wonder if companies other than Sharp can help me repair it at a cost.  I can't send it to Sharp Japan if i can't provide a vaild japanese address, as the warranty card says the warranty service is limited in Japan only...

This is my very first zaurus.  But it went dead in less than one week.  I am sure that I did take extra care of the hardware and no physical abuse at all.  Actually I just installed a few app, bluetooth (a newer one for the new kernel) and that's it.

Maybe zaurii are not suitable at all for non-linux gurus?  

[maxg]

Greetings,

If you really can't do anything with your Zaurus I might try to repair it since I've got some experience with the hardware (added internal WiFI & bluetooth myself in two C1000) and it's rather simple (you can't belive that, can you ? But it fact it IS quite simple). You'd just have to send it in France where I live. Of course there is no warranty or result. But first, try to follow all the instructions you'll find to have it working again.