SL-5500 bricked:-(

[sheel]

Hi all,

I  purchased a SL5500 a week back and it had the tkc rom. Since I could not use Intellisync/Qtopia to load applications, I decided to update it with Sharp ROM. The things seemed to go well until both green and orange lights turned off and never came back. I had taken all the precaustions - have the AC power connected etc.


I have tried to re-flash it several  times but no avail. No light comes on. I have tried other stuff mentioned on this board - keeping the battery out and reflash it with the AC connected only. Pressing full reset button for 15-20 seconds etc etc.. I have tested the AC adapter output and the battery and both are giving good reading on voltage.

Should'nt the orange light come on whenever AC power is connected even if the ROM is not working?

Please help!! I need more ideas on how to bring my Zaurus to life.

Thanks a million  in advance.
sheel

[saakmotu]

Should'nt the orange light come on whenever AC power is connected even if the ROM is not working?

If the battery is fully charged, I believe, the light will go out.

If you truly have tried everything that's been recommended throughout these forums, your options are limited.

You can call Sharp and send your Zaurus in for repair.

You can help the rest of us (see "unbricking" thread in General Discussion) try to figure out how/where to get a JTAG cable, Zaurus pads/adapter and the appropriate bootloaders.

Or you can use your Zaurus as a coaster.

At the moment I've got a bricked 5000d that I am trying to bring back to life and am very close to just sending it in for repair (even though I would much rather learn how to fix it myself [so I can brick it over and over again  ]).
I have yet to place a glass of liquid on top of it.

[sheel]

Thanks for your reply, saakmotu. Best wishes or your zaurus!!

I have two questions:

1. How do I drain the battery to a level that when I plug in AC adapter can start charging again?

2. Should it show orange light even if it has corrupted ROM at the moment, if the plug in AC adapater (assuming battery is not full?

Thanks
sheel

[lardman]

1. Leave it for a few days

2. No; a corrupted ROM can stop the battery light from coming on.


Si

[sheel]

I left the Z without AC power and battery for 24 hours and tried to reflash again but NO LUCK yet:-(. No orange light light ,, no response at all.

I am trying to us the Sharp ROM Ospack on a 256 MB CF card. The card format is FAT16.

The Sharp support guy says he will charge me $50 for the evaluation to judge what is wrong with the Z. He suggested that most probably they will have to clean the memory.  I will keep the battery out for some more time and see whether that helps.

saakmotu, how is you effort for recovering your 5000d going? Any succes? Please share if you have found a new trick!

Thanks a lot.
sheel

[rgzu]

sheel

I was in the same situation. I had flashed ROMS many times, but unfortunately the law of statistics eventually catches you up. I was very careful to make sure it had full AC power etc. but I still managed to brick it ie no lights, nothing and none of the various tricks would bring it to life so I eventually had to call Sharp.

They told me $50 + $10 shipping just to evaluate it and that this amount would go towards the cost of 'repair'. They were very vague about what it would cost to reflash and never gave me a straight answer.

Including this initial evaluation, it ended up costing me over $100 which is a ridiculous amount of labor charge in my opinion for such a simple 'repair'. I can now see why they won't let anyone have the JTAG software since they are onto a very good thing here.  You can send a Pocket PC etc away to have a major repair such as a battery replacement or touchcreen or LCD replacement for a similar amount of money!

If I ever do get the courage to flash the ROM again it will have to be a non Sharp ROM to minimise the chance of bricking it again.

I am upset over this because I like my Sharp a lot. I was expecting a ROM reflash to cost at least $50 and could cope with that amount, but $100 a pop is just too much to swallow if it happens again.

[lardman]

Might be worth trying a different card, or reformatting it?


Si

[Guest_sheel]

Keeping the battery out for days did not work for me. I did try two diffrent cards. I asked  for the jtag cable and the software but the Sharp support guy on the phone did not know much about it. I have sent it to Sharp.  Let us see how much it costs me.:-(

Yes, $100 is just too much but one does not have a choice. Ideally, Sharp should not charge anything in this case because I think the problem  happens due to some bug in the re-flashing mechanism.

I will keep everybody posted.

sheel

[Guest]

Yes, $100 is just too much but one does not have a choice. Ideally, Sharp should not charge anything in this case because I think the problem happens due to some bug in the re-flashing mechanism.

...and that's the moral of this story.. You have no choice as you said, which is why they feel they can rip you off. Also your comment about how the Sharp guy was vague was what I found ie they play the "we don't really know how much it's going to cost, that's up to the repair guys".

I tried, as you did, everything to resurrect my Sharp but if the reflash program code is corrupt then you are out of luck.

I don't mind being charged since I am certainly not one of those who expects things in life for free, but what I do object to is blatantly being taken advantage of, which is what happened.  It seems to me that these devices were never really intended for the consumer market as the repair cost seems more corporate than consumer.

Out of interest I had also equired about the JTAG cable and he didn't see anything listed. A euphemism for "we don't supply that to anyone outside Sharp"!

[siyuan]

Exactly the same situation here. Tried every suggested things. It would be extremely inconvenient for me to send the unit to Sharp because I bought it second hand, no idea where he got it from in the first place, and also because Sharp doesn't support this product in New Zealand.

I think I won't see my SL-5500 alive again....  

[tombraider]

Exactly the same situation here. Tried every suggested things. It would be extremely inconvenient for me to send the unit to Sharp because I bought it second hand, no idea where he got it from in the first place, and also because Sharp doesn't support this product in New Zealand.

I think I won't see my SL-5500 alive again.... 
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=89743\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I had the problem of no orange light after I accidentally had no AC adapter attached.
You could try the following procedure which I found posted on this forum.  It resurrected my Collie Zaurus:

I learned the hard way that running "shutdown -h now" on a 6000 might not be a good move at this stage in the game. I couldn't get the Z to start up again. No orange light would come on when I plugged it in either. I did the following to get it to work:
 
 1. Unplug the Zaurus.
 2. Take the big battery out of the back.
 3. Keep the backup battery switch on.
 4. Short the terminals that were connecting to the battery with a penny.
 5. Poke the Z with a couple of reset button bushings.
 6. Pack battery back in and secure it with the two switches.
 7. Plug it back in. If the orange light comes on, you're golden.