R.i.p.?

[Meyer]

My SL-C860 (Sharp ROM 1.10) now freezes on the boot "Wait..." screen. I've got backups of most of the important files, but I'd like to recover the system if possible.

CORRECTION (9/8): The Zaurus was running Sharp ROM 1.40 JP.

Here's what happened:

Last week, I started getting errors when trying to access certain files on my SD card (ext2 format). I assumed the card was going bad and purchased a replacement. Today I formatted the new card and was going to transfer the files over by tar'ing convenient sized chunks, saving each tar file to system memory. The plan was then to swap cards and untar the file to the new SD card, then delete the tar file in system memory and repeat the process until all the files were transfered.

After cleaning out system memory a little by deleting ipkg and music files, I tarred the first 19M of files, powered-off, and swapped cards. Powering-on, the Zaurus didn't detect the card, which was unexpected, but I rebooted without giving it much thought. Shutdown ... "Wait" screen with cursor flashing at lower right ... Cursor flashing at lower left ... forever. Pull and replace the battery, power-on ... freeze in same place. Pull battery and replace old SD card ... same result. With SD slot empty ... same result.

Then I try the secret keys. "OK POWER" is the only combination that works (other combinations result in the same reboot to frozen "Wait" screen). On the maintenance menu, "Fault check" looks promising, but results in the same frozen reboot.

The only theory I have is that the tar ball sitting in system memory is so big there's not enough memory for the boot process to complete (though I think there was around 5M free), and if I could get up to single-user mode I could delete the tar file and maybe get the Z to reboot.

Any ideas for bringing my dear Z back to life?

Barring that, I will try restoring the NAND flash memory to see if I can at least get a usable system.

Barring that, I will have to bid farewell to a good friend and say hello to a new brick.

[tux]

My SL-C860 (Sharp ROM 1.10) now freezes on the boot "Wait..." screen. I've got backups of most of the important files, but I'd like to recover the system if possible.

Here's what happened:

Last week, I started getting errors when trying to access certain files on my SD card (ext2 format). I assumed the card was going bad and purchased a replacement. Today I formatted the new card and was going to transfer the files over by tar'ing convenient sized chunks, saving each tar file to system memory. The plan was then to swap cards and untar the file to the new SD card, then delete the tar file in system memory and repeat the process until all the files were transfered.

After cleaning out system memory a little by deleting ipkg and music files, I tarred the first 19M of files, powered-off, and swapped cards. Powering-on, the Zaurus didn't detect the card, which was unexpected, but I rebooted without giving it much thought. Shutdown ... "Wait" screen with cursor flashing at lower right ... Cursor flashing at lower left ... forever. Pull and replace the battery, power-on ... freeze in same place. Pull battery and replace old SD card ... same result. With SD slot empty ... same result.

Then I try the secret keys. "OK POWER" is the only combination that works (other combinations result in the same reboot to frozen "Wait" screen). On the maintenance menu, "Fault check" looks promising, but results in the same frozen reboot.

The only theory I have is that the tar ball sitting in system memory is so big there's not enough memory for the boot process to complete (though I think there was around 5M free), and if I could get up to single-user mode I could delete the tar file and maybe get the Z to reboot.

Any ideas for bringing my dear Z back to life?

Barring that, I will try restoring the NAND flash memory to see if I can at least get a usable system.

Barring that, I will have to bid farewell to a good friend and say hello to a new brick.

  Any joy with the problem? I'm not going to make too many suggestions, because I seem to remember that you use pdaxrom? Aren't there extra, possible problems because of uboot? I know that there are several useful threads in the forums because I was desperately grateful to find the information after one of my short forays into pdaxrom territory!

Hope you got it sorted quickly. I'm no nearer setting up the wiki software on my spare desktop! Ignorance triumphs over ambition! Perhaps the new sharp netbook has appeared on the horizon at the right time for us both!

Back to playing Mafia Wars for me...

My 860 is gathering dust if your problem is terminal....

[Meyer]

Any joy with the problem? I'm not going to make too many suggestions, because I seem to remember that you use pdaxrom? Aren't there extra, possible problems because of uboot? I know that there are several useful threads in the forums because I was desperately grateful to find the information after one of my short forays into pdaxrom territory!

No joy beyond finally getting a little time to work with the thing. As no better solutions had presented themselves, I booted up the maintenance menu and did a full clear. That restored the Z to factory-shipped status and working-order. Then I updated ROM to Sharp's version 1.40 JP. Now it's just a matter of tracking down and reinstalling my applications. Fortunately, most of my important files were on my SD card which seems to have come through this ordeal fine.

I gave up experimenting with pdaXrom long ago after I failed to get it to detect my wireless modem card. I suppose I might give it another try now that I've given up the wireless modem connection service and put in a wireless LAN. On the other hand, this crisis has shown it's useful to have both Zs with the same OS.  Also, the fading of the Zaurus community makes me think this isn't the best time to be experimenting if I end up needing advice.

In any case, around the time I gave up on pdaXrom, I decided to give my old favorite Emacs on try on the Z. I have had a very good time getting reaquainted with this powerful old friend. So much so that I hardly use any of the PDA applications anymore. Knowing where and in what form my data are kept outweighs the inconvenience of memorizing a few key-chords.