No end of my pain! Flashing 5600, failing, no joy

[havoc]

I attempted to flash my 5600 with the OpenZaurus ROM, following the OpenZaurus instructions of holding down the C and D keys while resetting.  I got flashing LEDs, but the flash never completed (after waiting 30 min+), now I have no Zaurus.  I have attempted flashing back to the Sharp provided 5600 ROM.

If I\'d dug a little deeper, I\'d have found that the update for the 5600 goes through the menu, and not the C+D+reset method.

Am I pretty much screwed here, or is there a way for me to get my Zaurus back up?

havoc

[Greg2]

First,

bring up the maintenance menu and select format, this should work

if not, remove the battery for about 2 hrs and try again with the Sharp files to flash back

Greg

[havoc]

There\'s no menu to choose from.  No boot, \"no nothin\'.\"

The batteries out.  I\'ll see what happens when I get back from Church.

Thanks for the tip!

[Greg2]

There was a thread on the dev/net about this problem but for some reason I can\'t search more then 30 days back without being redirected to Sharp. I will check this later.

This may help some:
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...ht=bricked+5600

Greg

[havoc]

Thanks, that helped.  I can get to the Reset+D+M and Reset+D+P menues.  I have performed, successfully, a NAND Flash (Full), but that doesn\'t seem to solve my problems.

How do I \"un-brick\" this thing?  All I want to do is a ROM, any ROM loaded back into this thing and have it run.

[havoc]

Referencing this thread:
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...iewtopic&t=1152

Can anyone send me a full NAND Flash Backup for an SL-5600?  This might get me up and running again.

havoc@harrisdev.com

[Anonymous]

what is nand?

cant you just use load the files update.sh, zImage.bin from current sharp rom to it?

[tumnus]

Havoc, do you know how you get to the Maintenance menu? It\'s in all the 5600 ROM upgrade instructions.

Look at the Linux user instructions here:
http://www.myzaurus.com/ROMupdate6.asp

[havoc]

That\'s great, IF you haven\'t already bricked your 5600 by using the upgrade instructions for OZ!  I DON\'T HAVE A MAINTENANCE MENU BECAUSE I HOSED THE WHOLE THING.

THERE IS NO WAY TO GET TO THE MAINTENANCE MENU ON MY 5600.  What I need is a workaround to get the Maintenance Menu BACK.

In Case anyone missed this one critical point, There is no Maintenance Menu on my 5600 because I blew it away when I tried to update the ROM using the D+C+Reset instructions found on the OZ page.

Now, is there any way I can replace the NAND on my mahcine, or is there any other way I can get this thing back to the point where I DO have a Maintenance Menu?

[Greg2]

That\'s great, IF you haven\'t already bricked your 5600 by using the upgrade instructions for OZ!  I DON\'T HAVE A MAINTENANCE MENU BECAUSE I HOSED THE WHOLE THING.

THERE IS NO WAY TO GET TO THE MAINTENANCE MENU ON MY 5600.  What I need is a workaround to get the Maintenance Menu BACK.

I know your upset, but that won\'t help you here. This is a tricky area to repair.

Here\'s a link to read:
http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic....&highlight=nand

Here\'s Klaus Weidner\'s link, he has had some luck with this ? go to his sight and email him:
http://pocketworkstation.org/

Good luck

Greg

[havoc]

yyyyyyyyyyyyeah, that made it worse.

I renamed the SYSTC700.DBK to SYST5600.DBK, and did a NAND Restore.  That was BAD.

Now, my other menus are gone.  The best I can get is flashing Mail and Battery LEDs on a D+C+Reset (Full Reset).

The Z is on it\'s way to Romeoville, IL, to be serviced.  I\'ll ship it out this afternoon.

At least I can say that I\'m impressed with Sharps phone support in the US!  Got an answer AND a knowledgeable technician on the first call.

I bet I\'m a little gun shy about OpenZaurus ROMs after this.... maybe I can pick up a used 5500 to test ROMs with in the future....

[zbones]

I know this is a little bit after the horse has bolted, but for the benifit of anyone reading this in the future with a similar problem.  

Try to get a nand image from someone with the same model zaurus as yours.  

NEVER try and flash a different models nand backup file to your machine.

The only exception to this ( at the time of writing ) are the c760 and c860, which are hardware identical to each other, even then you are still taking a risk. I would advise you to locate a nand image from a machine with the same model number.

havoc, I know this doesn\'t help much now, but had you waited for a nand backup from another sl5600 you would have almost certainly cured your problem.


The trouble with nand backup files is that it contains everything on your machine including all your pim data, passwords, any comercial apps you may have bought etc.  So people would be daft to post one from their machine.

Given time, somebody who had recently re-flashed could have posted a \"clean\" image for you to apply to your machine.

Conics hold \"clean\" images from the clamshell series, maybe some kind sould coul still upload a \"clean\" sl5600 rom for future folks to use in cases like this.

The other moral of this story is to always take a nand backup of your machine before trying a new rom, or anything that has a risk associated with it.

I take a nand backup of my machine before I install any software that I haven\'t previously tried as it is the easiest/quickest way of recovering your machine fully in case things go wrong.

So far I have only done two nand restores, and both worked perfectly.

Peter.

[havoc]

yeah, Peter, I\'m right there... just got there a whole lot later than you did.

I waited for 12 hours.  I got 0 indication of an SL-5600 NAND backup coming this year, so I jumped.  No biggie.

Can you guess what the first thing I\'m going to do when it comes back is?  You bet!  There will be a copy of SYST5600.DBK available at http://www.galacticslacker.com/ within the hour of my opening the box.

While it\'s still fresh, and no personal data.  That\'ll be a nice touch.

Too bad that no one is aware of the value of such a backup BEFORE they start messing with their unit.

Oh, well.  I\'m glad I can be of service to future generations of Zaurus users.

[dz]

I have 2 5600\'s, and one is a fresh barely touched sitting next to me.  If someone could point me in the right direction to a good tutorial on how to make a NAND Backup I could make one out of the fresh 5600.  It\'s also one with the PXA255 processor, so maybe someone with the PXA250 processor could get one also?  

havoc:  which kind do you have coming in?

[havoc]

It\'s a 5600, and I just sent it to the Sharp Service Center this morning.  I had no idea they had already changed the CPUs in the 5600 until just now.

Based on my most recent experience, I\'ll let someone else tell you how to get to the Maintenance Menu, but if you want to send me a NAND Backup, I\'ll be happy to post it with any helpful info.

Shoot me a note at havoc@harrisdev.com, and we\'ll iron out the details of getting me the file.