Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Thanks. But no, it's not the charger nor the battery, since I have changed the battery to the one of my girlfriend's n900, fully charged using the official charger.

And by the way, when I plug it to the charger, the same looping behavior as described earlier appears (yellow led and faded nokia sign)...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Seems like bootloader is KO, so try to cold flash it (google on how to do that). It is tricky, but it can be done.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Thanks. I am reading here about cold flashing:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Flasher

It says I have to give the "hw revision number" as an argument to the flasher. Do you know how to find out which number is my device, given that I can't turn it on?

Tried a few numbers, nothing, the flasher does not see the device...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Hmm, I don't think you can find your HW revision. Could be wrong anyway.

BTW by saying "tricky" I mean that there is a very short interval (about 200ms or so) flasher to see your device. You need to be persistent :D, i.e. it will see it once every 15-20 tries. Or it cannot see it at all and you need to try on a different PC.

EDIT:
The procedure for putting device in cold-flash mode (as long as I can remember) is:

with flasher running

1. disconnect USB cable
2. remove the battery
3. connect USB cable
4. insert the battery

if nothing happens go back to 1

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Thanks for the help. To cold flash I do simply thsi:

$ flasher-3.5 -c -h RX-51:<hw_id> -F <FIASCO image> -f

Do I need to hold the u when inserting the battery?

So after a few trials of plugging in and and out the battery, something moved:

Suitable USB device not found, waiting.
USB device found found at bus 002, device address 003.
Waiting for ASIC id...
Got 69 bytes.
ASIC ID:
05 01 05 01 34 30 07 57 13 02 01 00 12 15 01 df
e3 44 e2 22 fe ec a5 d1 d4 6b e7 53 03 a9 02 87
de 51 6b 14 15 01 87 3b 4d cd ca f5 44 4d 24 ec
b2 ac 95 53 88 41 4f ab cd 66 15 09 01 f7 48 8f
28 a0 27 e5 b3
Sending 2nd image (14720 bytes)... done.
Sending ping... timeout!
failed.
Sending ping... pong.
Sending secondary (109440 bytes)... done.
Suitable USB device not found, waiting.

it all was very quick! Ideas?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

An additional parameter is needed (something about to use USB for serial port).
You don't need 'u' pressed. And try first to flash only bootloader or bootloader and kernel, not the whole rootfs, it will save you a lot of restoring.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

You are right, it does not work without the usb post argument.

I am flashing this one:

RX-51_2009SE_2.2009.51-1.002_PCOMBINED_002_ARM.bin

What should I flash to limit myself to the bootloader?

The above behavior of the flasher outputting that matix of numbers appears only once, that is, if I want that to happen again I have to restart the flasher, and it happens when I start the flasher with the cable plugged and the battery in, remove the battery, and finally plug it back it. At that stage the phone shakes and the nokia faded logo appears...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

that happened with me once
the problem was actually caused by windows XP (it was not detecting my N900 with flasher) neither linux did (i didn't know why)

just changed to windows 7 and it detected it
after that i made another reflash with linux (and it worked) tried with XP again (and it worked)

...so
you may wanna try to change the windows you are using and try plugging N900 in different USB ports
don't forget to have a charged battery first
that's all what i can say

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

There should be an option like -flash-only=nolo (for bootloader). Read flasher documentation on how to flash only the kernel.

And the above behaviour with matrix of numbers is?

EDIT:

The firmware you are flashing seems outdated, there should be 2 newer firmwares available.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Thanks for spotting the option to flash only the bootloader. The doc is all in here, isn't it?

http://wiki.maemo.org/Flasher

This is the ' above behaviour with matrix of numbers', output of the flasher:

Suitable USB device not found, waiting.
USB device found found at bus 002, device address 003.
Waiting for ASIC id...
Got 69 bytes.
ASIC ID:
05 01 05 01 34 30 07 57 13 02 01 00 12 15 01 df
e3 44 e2 22 fe ec a5 d1 d4 6b e7 53 03 a9 02 87
de 51 6b 14 15 01 87 3b 4d cd ca f5 44 4d 24 ec
b2 ac 95 53 88 41 4f ab cd 66 15 09 01 f7 48 8f
28 a0 27 e5 b3
Sending 2nd image (14720 bytes)... done.
Sending ping... timeout!
failed.
Sending ping... pong.
Sending secondary (109440 bytes)... done.
Suitable USB device not found, waiting.

And yes, that is an old firmware, I was in fact flashing the newest one, just wrote it wrong.

Gonna try now again... naaa, same story...