Did I really kill my n900?
 

Hi everyone,

First post here.

Reason is that I killed my n900. I bought a charger from a guy on the street, so not an official charger. I plugged the charger when the n900 was on, the phone started charging, so I left it there. When I got back, the phone was off, and I could not turn it back on since then.

If I plug it to the usb port of my laptop (both win and linux), I get this looping behavior:

1 - the led is fixed yellow for a while (1 min or 2)
2 - the phone shakes for half a second and the faded nokia sign appears on screen; at the same time, the led blinks yellow for a few times
3 - no sign for a couple of seconds
4 - back to 1

The battery is fully charged; in fact, it is the battery of my gf's n900.

Does the above ring a bell to any of you? Any idea what I could try to do to at least get back my data? I tried flashing, but the flasher never finds the usb device, also using the technique of plugging in the battery while holding 'u'...

Thanks for any help!

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Sorry, I guess this is the wrong section, I should have posted on the N900 one. Can the mods move this?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

You may have sizzled the TWL4030. Although I can't imagine what would do this, as there are numerous protections in place before you reach the chip.

Try a battery pull for 24h?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

I recognize the symptoms as to what has happened to me last night, while I resumed a game of Risk. The phone just switched off, I tried to reboot, after which it gave me a multi boot menu and than wouldn't go any further. Nothing after that. Just out of the blue. Nothing installed, uninstalled, no tweaks, nothing.

Concerning not being able to get flasher running properly: What OS are you using to run the flasher? There are numerous reports of Win7 64 bits being problematic, but I am on Linux so I can not confirm that first hand.

I ended up reflashing the kernel only(!), and was set again.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Thanks for answering.

I am pretty sure I left it with the battery unplugged for more than 24h, but I'll try again...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

No menu for me. If I press the power button *nothing* happens. I described earlier what happens when I plug the USB cable, still no menus appear

I am trying to refresh the kernel only (at least I guess that's what I am doing). I used a 32 bit XP and a 32 bit Ubuntu, with same results.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

try enabling it in R&D mode with watchdogs disabled.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Not much use if Flasher doesn't see the device, eh?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Indeed, just tried now without success.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

I have also tried another charger and although it said it was charging, the battery still went flat. I checked the milliamps and it was 300. the n900 charger is 1200 ma. Just a thought, your charger may not be kicking out enough juice.

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...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

made my day...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Which is actually a great news, seems you have succesfully cold flashed your n900 and at least TWL chip and SoC are alive. Now try only booloader and if that fails to restore your n900 you can try to flash kernel only. If that fails too you have no option but to flash the whole rootfs. And maybe eMMC too.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Oh, really? :eek:

Ok, so. Now I got that output when giving the option --flash-only=nolo.

I have now repeated it with all options for --flash-only, got the 'good news' each time, btu still the phone would not switch on. But now at least I see the usb sign on the screen, even though it's faded like the nokia logo...

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

now you sholuld be able to flash the kernel use the international version not the country specific version

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Now extract zImage(kernel) from firmware and flash it. See flasher docs or ask google on how to extract kernel image from firmware and how to flash kernel only. And as I already told you, if that fails, try to flash the whole firmware. And eMMC if needed.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Am I the only one who thinks it's very cute that there's an N900 couple out there?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Mmmm I did not notice the international version, I tried with the US one (actually, I am not entirely sure if my phone is a US or UK version..).
But did I not just flash the kernel by setting --flash-only=kernel? :confused:

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Ok, I'll see what I manage to do (I am at work now, without the phone, nor sudo privileges). For what I understood, if I flash eMMC I lose all the data in the phone, right?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

It's more than cute: it's really helpful when you brick one of them :p

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

yes flashing the emmc will wipe out my docs ..try just the kernel first read the wiki fully ..i know you prolly have several times but read it again ...if you flash the kernel and rootfs you will lose your apps aka combined/fiasco

doesnt matter uk/us look for
RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM

that is pr1.3 there maybe one for pr1.3.1 that is newer but i know for a fact that the one above works ...there have been problems with other versions. If you are installling cssu do not install pr1.3.1 its only a security update and is included in the latest cssu

RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.13-2.VANILLA_PR_EMMC_MR0_ARM
is the matching emmc data if needed

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

mmm so I did:

./flasher-3.5 -F RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -u

which extracted a bunch of stuff, including zImage

then I tried:

sudo ./flasher-3.5 -f -k zImage -R

but, as usual, it hangs at Suitable "USB device not found, waiting."

I don't know, I don't think I should try flashing th emmc, or should I? I'd like to try to keep the data :(

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

when you connect the device to flash what do you see on the n900?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

ok, recharged the battery fully, flashed the whole COMBINED package, worked!

Now, though, it entered this loop of nokia sign - 4 dots, all faded, which I read someone complaining about....

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

never came acroos that ...ive had a boot loop before but it would atleast make it to the desktop be fore it rebooted ...i had to flash the emmc to get rid of it but hang on a little longer maybe someone has an answer and you can still salvage your data

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Now it can flash ok. Then it reboots, the screen lits up properly, I see the dots for a few seconds.... and it goes back into the loop of faded nokia logos and dots...
I tried enabling the rd mode, it loops in that mode too, only then the screen lits up and some info about the phone are shown (like the hw revision).

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

If the data on eMMC is important to you, you can try to flash uboot-pr13 kernel and boot from Meego CE(or whatever fancy name it has now) on SD card. You will have MyDocs visible under Meego. But according to how your device behaves I don't think information in your MyDocs is there. So by flashing eMMC you will lose whatever remnants are there in MyDocs, but at least you will have a working device (hopefully)

EDIT:
BTW it is possible you've cold-flashed with wrong HW revision, which one did you use?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

That's the weirdest thing I've seen.

Normally, it would take a few minutes for Maemo to optify stuff on first boot. (You will see yellow light flashing while it does this)

P.S. Are you using ext4 for /home partition?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Yes, I flashed the 2101. I did it again now to be sure.

About your suggestions above, I will have to study a bit before I can try. Never heard of uboot-p13... Thanks.

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

Well, that's what happens, the light flashes and the faded dots are shown, but it gets stuck in the loop...

Not sure, how do I check?

Re: Did I really kill my n900?
 

If you don't know about ext4 /home partition, then you didn't do it ;)

At this point in time, since the dots mean that kernel is able to boot, and Xomap is probably started, we'd probably want to get some dmesg logs.

I have never needed to do this before, so maybe someone else may be able to help you.