After Reflash Black Screen Of Death

[midget35]

Hi guys,

I've had a bad time getting my Pandora to play nice. The main problem was that some pnd files wouldn't execute. I tried everything I could & trawled through these threads but nothing worked.

So I reflashed it exactly as described on the Pandora site. All seemed to go well - then when I come to turn the pandora on after reflashing, I just get a black screen. Gutted. Is my Pandora dead? I've tried reflashing twice more but nothing - same black screen..

Thanks for any help

 

[mali]

I assume you didn't do a "blind" flash, so you saw the boot menu, which means that the screen is not defective. You should download the latest firmware again(see Tweaks Thread) and put it on a freshly formatted(use tool from Tweaks Thread) SD card and try again. You should watch what's happening on the screen till it has finished. This might take a while, don't disrupt the process. You should also connect the PSU to make sure it doesn't run out of juice when installing.

 

[EvilDragon]

So, are you getting the bootlogo or just a black screen?

If it's just black, the bootloader is gone. It can still be reflashed, but you need a bit more work setting up an SD Card for that.
I can help you with that though.

 

[torpor]

Make sure your Pandora isn't just booting up with the LCD turned off - it can do that sometimes (like if you shutdown/suspend with the lid closed) .. press FN-I to increase the brightness when you think your Pandora might've booted ..

 

[midget35]

Thank you all so much for your responses. I do indeed get the pandora logo but then the screen is constantly black - sorry for not being clearer. I will format the sd card as instructed and try again.

Will post back here soon

 

[EvilDragon]

Thank you all so much for your responses. I do indeed get the pandora logo but then the screen is constantly black - sorry for not being clearer. I will format the sd card as instructed and try again.

Will post back here soon

If you still get the bootloader, it really most likely is a bad SD Card

 

[mali]

^ Possible but unlikely after two attempts to reflash. Reflashing should wipe all settings and set brightness to default, I think.

 

[midget35]

Well I formatted the sd card and just added the flash kit files. Unfortunately the outcome is identical. Greatly appreciate any further ideas.

 

[mali]

^ Did you redownload the firmware, or did you use an old file you downloaded earlier? Did you try [Fn]- key-combo to increase the brightness?

edit:
Btw, it's possible to boot off an SD card(see Tweaks Thread). It might also be worth to try a different SD card.

 

[midget35]

I redownloaded the firmware - though the one I'd used earlier was just a few hours old. I have tried the [Fn]- key-combo to no avail. Fomratted the card a 2nd time (the card seemed to be fine for a few days, so I'm not sure its the cause of my troubles now).

Incidentally when the flashing process is supposed to be underway, I am getting messages stating that the uboot and uimage are 'already flashed'.

I am scratching around for another sd card at the moment. Really welcome any more thoughts on this.

Thanks again guys.

 

[midget35]

if uboot and uimage are already flashed, seems the image is not present, or damaged, or not saved correctly. You have to have both rootfs.img AND rootfs.md5 filenames in the root folder of your sd card

rootfs.img and rootfs.md5 are there. Fresh from the newly downloaded zip archive

 

[midget35]

Are you formatting FAT32 or "plain" FAT?

FAT32 it is.

 

[EvilDragon]

Does it report any errors while flashing? You can show a more comprehensive output while flashing pressing ALT and RIGHT (if I remember correctly, but it says the combination on the screen).

 

[daffy]

FWIW, I have the same issue.

I mostly work on a Mac. I'd tried to get my Mac to format and write to the card as ext2, but I can't get my Mac to do that. So I reformatted the card to Fat32 using Disk Utility. The card had previously, out of the package, worked just fine flashing to v2 firmware and all other uses.

This (formatting SD to Fat32 on Snow Leopard) works fine in every other device I've done it with, and it appears to be fine here. But either the v3 reflasher or the mac-formatted Fat32 is failing here.

Got to say: I think Fat32 is a simple enough format, and the Mac-formatted SD cards work well enough in all other applications, that I would be inclined to call sensitivity to the formatting a bug in the Pandora. Also, many people who will want to buy Pandoras will be users of Macs or Linux boxes mainly: a reliance on a Windows-only utility to format SD cards is a non-trivial bug.

It would also be surprising if everyone except Samsung or whoever made the utility has Fat32 formatting wrong.

 

[EvilDragon]

Same issue?

What image did you get? Maybe something is wrong with the image?

Also, did you check the output?

 

[jonjandran]

Same exact issue here. Flashed with the latest firmware from the main site. 16gb SDHC card formatted Fat32. Everything went fine. Said to hit enter to turn off. Did that and re-started it. Pandora boot logo then black screen. Tried again and same thing.

Any more ideas guys?

 

[jonjandran]

Re-downloaded, re-formatted the Sd card (with windows and with the Panasonic app) re-formatted with full format and quick format. Same exact issue.

Slightly annoyed now. LOL

 

[daffy]

Also, did you check the output?

(retyped, because don't see how I can copy and paste):

u-boot.bin already flashed, skipped.
uImage already flashed, skipped.
Calculating checkshum, this might take a few minutes...
<checksum gobbledygook here>
formatting..
done.
Writing rootfs, please wait. This may take up to 15 minutes (actually takes maybe two)..
done.
==========
results:
u-boot: already there
u-boot-env: already empty
kernel: already there
rootfs: flashed /mnt/mmcblk0p1/rootfs.img
----------
Update FINISHED
----------
press Enter to power off

 

[mali]

It might be best to pull the latest Hotfix firmware that includes the Hotfix, imo.

 

[daffy]

Hotfix 2 is a pnd. It's not clear to me how to revert.