repair advice for bad NAND blocks

[badog]

"Get the recovery package from here: http://pocketworkstation.org/files/recover/
Read the included README. Read it again. You really want to do it? If you got this far, I think you do.
Copy the files on a CF card and put the CF in the Zaurus
Use your AC adapter in the process and make sure your battery is not low
Open the battery cover and take out the battery for about 5 seconds
Put it back
Hold down the C+D keys on the keyboard
Close the battery cover while holding the keys
The mail and charge leds will continously light and will turn off after 30secs-2mins
"
_____________________________________________________________
i can't download recover from pocketworkstation.org
where has same files?
thanks

___________________

[the_ph1lth]

I expect the result on how to repair Z's with bad nand blocks -and flashing mail lights - is still that they're bricked?
Just lost the second C700 to this, fortunately the first one could be bounced back to conics. Don't think I had this last one much more than 12 months (sniff old pal)
I think its how most Z's die....

The recovery package is great if you've just had a bad NAND flash but doesn't get over hardware failures. So if you've been messing with flashes and get an error its probably recoverable. Maybe not if it just breaks one day and shows up nand errors etc in the D+M tests.

Now has anyone got any info or actually tried replacing the nand chip?

Guess they're BGA and remember a Japanese site looking at hardware?

[propofol]

I have just recently purchased a brand new C3100 from Conics. I installed the 1.23 version of Cacko however a range of error messages is reported during the bootup including:

carmfs: wrong magic
FAT: bogus logical sector 381
several inode errors
pxa_sda_wait_id_response error (repeated about 30 times)

I reinstalled Cacko several times. I repartioned the root flash to 37Mb since it seemed that the recommended 32Mb was not large enough. (The root took up 36644K according to the "df" command. )

I finally used the "D & M" service menu and did a full flash check, this reported 1 badblock. I assume at least some of the error are due to a defective root file system.

Has anyone with a C3100 & Cacko had similar error messages or is my problems just due to a hardware problem?

My old second hand C860 had 3 badblocks. Is this a common problem with zaurus flash memory?

Regards,
Stefan

[drnick]

carmfs: wrong magic
FAT: bogus logical sector 381
several inode errors
pxa_sda_wait_id_response error (repeated about 30 times)

Cacko 1.23b1 on my C3k gives the same errors.  I have maybe 3 inode errors.  Nothing to worry about.  The pxa_sba_wait_id has to do with the SD card being inserted on boot.  Take the SD out on boot and you shouldnt see these.  It has something to do with sharp's buggy SD implimentation.

[GadgetGuy]

I have just recently purchased a brand new C3100 from Conics. I installed the 1.23 version of Cacko however a range of error messages is reported during the bootup including:

carmfs: wrong magic
FAT: bogus logical sector 381
several inode errors
pxa_sda_wait_id_response error (repeated about 30 times)

I reinstalled Cacko several times. I repartioned the root flash to 37Mb since it seemed that the recommended 32Mb was not large enough. (The root took up 36644K according to the "df" command. )

I finally used the "D & M" service menu and did a full flash check, this reported 1 badblock. I assume at least some of the error are due to a defective root file system.

Has anyone with a C3100 & Cacko had similar error messages or is my problems just due to a hardware problem?

My old second hand C860 had 3 badblocks. Is this a common problem with zaurus flash memory?

Regards,
Stefan
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106422\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

This is all totally normal. If you install lots of applications you will also have many more inode errors.

The recommended flash partitioning should work ok - if you give it more than needed, you probably waste some of your memory.

AFAIK there is nothing to worry about... ( I also was also concerned when I saw this first, but after asking a couple of questions, and after using my C3100 without any problems whatsoever - but with lots if inode and such error messages during boot - I really dont worry about this any more)

[lindenle]

Can you do a NAND restore from an SD card in the D+M Menu?

[mspencer]

I think someone earlier said only models later than the C700 can do that.

[Wildherb]

I have a 14 month old SL-C700 with hardware problems.  Tonight I'm going over to my Japanese teacher's house, and together we're going to call Sharp Japan tech support and try to get help.  She warned me that Japanese are typically very regimented, so I may have problems getting detailed technical information from line-level support staff.  I'd like to pose my question to the group here also:

First:  I've flashed replacement OS images and erased and reloaded dozens of times.  This is not a simple newbie issue.  

I know I have bad "NAND" flash in my C700.  I may or may not have other hardware problems.  I'm trying to determine whether it would be a waste of time to hire an experienced electronics technician to replace the flash chips in my C700, or if I should instead just send the C700 to Japan.

I'll first describe what my C700 is doing now, and then will describe the symptoms I saw before the C700 failed completely.

Currently the C700 can get into the D+M menu, but only intermittently.  (I've been in this menu dozens of times, so this is not a user training issue.)  Usually if I press and hold D+M and toggle the battery lock, the flashing email light stops its flashing temporarily, and then starts again.  I've been unable to get into the D+M menu for the past two days -- except for today, when I tried and it worked.

I have a SYSTC700.DBK file on a write-protected SD card.  When I use the D+M menu's "NAND Flash Restore" option, the restore process runs for a few seconds (maybe 10 to 15 lines worth of green bar) and then says:

Code: [Select]

NAND Restore from SD

file:SYSTC700.DBK

Execute restore?

Delete all flash data?

Restore...failed

format error
If I go into EXTRA MENU, then Zaurus Test, then NAND Flash (Full), this test runs a destructive write-read test of my flash and tells me I have 2001 bad flash blocks:

Code: [Select]

NAND Flash (Full)



checking ecc... OK.

writing all 1...

adr = 4000000

Bad Block Num = 2001

verifying 1...

adr = 4000000

Bad Block Num = 2001

writing all 2...

adr = 4000000

Bad Block Num = 2001

verifying 2...

adr = 4000000

Bad Block Num = 2001

checking number...OK.

success.
Also, interestingly, as it tests flash it counts forward in 2^20 increments, starting from 100000 and counting upward toward 4000000.  Between ranges c00000 and 2900000 it counts very quickly, as if each block is failing completely and the test is being aborted on each block in that range.

So that's where I'm at right now.  The problem seemed to start Tuesday before last (March 30).  Here's what I observed back then:  (quoted from my April 2 post at externe.net's older C700 forum)

I think I have a specific kind of hardware failure, but I'm not sure what's wrong. I probably can't fix it on my own, but I'd like to understand the problem. This isn't really flashing-related: I've been running the same Sukoshi rom for several weeks. I'm noticing three kinds of failures:

first failure type: the machine will occasionally lock up, hard. The clock stops, the battery meter stops playing its 'plugged into power' animation, and no key presses, card inserts and removals, or other inputs will make it react. I can toggle the battery lock switch and it'll restart.

second failure type: sometimes after toggling the battery lock switch, the email light will flash, as if to say it can't boot. Sometimes if I just toggle the switch again it'll boot normally; sometimes I have to toggle the switch several times; or sometimes I have to take the battery completely out and leave it without power for several minutes before trying again. It's running again right now though.

third failure type: occasionally I'll have programs refuse to start, or crash in the middle of running. Qtopia will restart sometimes. I've had some odd filesystem corruption also, and the system has been unable to find important executables (like cardctl).

After I started seeing that third type of failure, I backed everything up and flashed the latest Cacko QT ROM. This ROM has one important difference: when Qtopia starts I get a "wait 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" screen that gives me a chance to bail out of Qtopia and get a console-only command prompt. When I do that after Qtopia crashes and restarts, I see the following in my system log (dmesg command):

sharp_sl_nand_read_ecc: Failed ECC read, page 0x00003a5b
sharp_sl_nand_read_ecc: Failed ECC read, page 0x00003a5b
mtd->read(0x44 bytes from 0x4b7a4) returned ECC error
Node CRC 1c614139 != calculated CRC 51a10890 for node at 0004b7a4

These four lines are repeated dozens of times, filling the entire buffer printed by dmesg.

While in console-only mode, sometimes my shell will crash and I'll be back at a login screen again. After several crashes I would be able to log in, but when I tried to execute a single command I'd be back at a login prompt again. After several repeats of *that*, the login manager is unable to start correctly and starts spawning repeatedly, causing init to shut it down for 5 minutes.

For a while I was able to run Qtopia, and I ran the 'badblocks' program to look for bad Flash blocks.  Strangely enough, I didn't find any:

OK, now this is weird:

Right now I'm sitting here running:
badblocks -p 1000 /dev/mtdblock0 &
badblocks -p 1000 /dev/mtdblock1 &
badblocks -p 1000 /dev/mtdblock2 &
badblocks -p 1000 /dev/mtdblock3 &

and it's just sitting there making the whole system unusably slow, but thrashing NAND like crazy. It's not finding *any* bad blocks. (Hopefully I'll get a chance to see the error messages when it finally finds problems.)

But it's been running this for over 30 minutes now, and hasn't found any bad blocks.

So might this mean I have some kind of intermittent problem that makes the whole flash memory subsystem flaky? Maybe it'll sit here and run fine for a while, and then suddenly be unable to read *anything*. I'm not sure.

The C700 is an amazing device -- I never realized how much I used it every day until I was without it.  I'd love to get it back up and running soon, and hopefully without sending it back to Japan.

Thanks again for your help, guys!  I'll post back here if I find out anything new from my call to Sharp Japan.

--Michael Spencer

Just a bump for this thread.

Having had  a very healthy Cacko + Meanie's Debian XQt environment running for many happy months, I foolishly tried, and managed to "brick" my C3K while trying to install Zubuntu. No key combination would do anything, so seriously, we are talking about paperweight mode here!. Sadly, I gave up on my Z and bought an iPod touch (shame on me!)

A couple of months later I plugged it in and managed to get a D+M menu but still no D+B menu. From D+M I tried to refresh the NAND to start again but that would also fail. Then I googled and found this thread and managed to erase the NAND (which showed an error) as described here, and subsequently, the NAND restore did work. So, many thanks Zumi for your notes. Looks like I've salvaged my Z!!

As of today,  my 'life' now runs from my iPod, so I've got nothing to lose by exploring a few other distros but to be honest, my feeling is that a full distro such as BSD or Debian/Ubuntu is just too much for a Z's hardware and that a long-in-the-tooth Cacko is still ore rewarding than a slow native Debian.  I'd like to think that Angstrom or pdaXrom held the answer but if I'm going anywhere, it will probably be back to OZ which at least has some stable appications. Sorry devs,

[speculatrix]

good news you restored it, and I hope you'll stick with the Z for a while and maybe sample the delights of ubuntu and android.