Autobrick?

[z32fairlady]

Hi,

My GP2X had bricked itself. One day when I switched it on, it suddenly popped up the firmware upgrading screen while I have only mamegp2x and roms on the SD card. And the next time I switched on again, it was bricked.

People on #GP2XDEV said it's "the famous autobrick feature" and suggested me to send it back.

Now I had sent it back to the shop for replacement, and the new unit should be back within a couple of weeks.

I just want to ask, why did it happen? Is it something to do with the firmware itself? Is there any way I could prevent it from happening, like the way I place files on the SD card, the way I format the card (using my computer vs. using my digital camera), the filesystem to use, sharing the card with digital cameras, etc...

BTW the firmware version of GP2X is 1.2.1 out of the box. I hope I don't need to make it to 1.4 when I get the unit back.

regards and TIA

 

[Mudi]

Format the SD card on your PC to FAT32. Anything else is taking a risk.

 

[Vimacs]

fat is named to be faster for the gp2x than fat32.
Just put the card in after the gp2x booted and you are 100% on the secure side.

 

[Drak]

fat is named to be faster for the gp2x than fat32.
Just put the card in after the gp2x booted and you are 100% on the secure side.

​

This is what I do, im formated in fatty as well. Plus the benefit of putting it in after boot is that the boot wont freeze as often. Like my stupid gp2x freezes 50% of the time at a bootup if I have the card in there.

 

[Mudi]

I bet this wasn't supposed to go in the GP32 FAQ section. :rolleyes:

 

[slygamer]

I just want to ask, why did it happen? Is it something to do with the firmware itself? Is there any way I could prevent it from happening, like the way I place files on the SD card, the way I format the card (using my computer vs. using my digital camera), the filesystem to use, sharing the card with digital cameras, etc...

​

The version of u-boot that GPH supplied on the GP2X was on sale cheap from Dodgy Brothers Incorporated and can sometimes see a firmware upgrade file on the SD card when there is none there at all. So it happily goes off to upgrade the firmware with absolutely nothing, or at most, with random data it plucked out of its binary ass. But just consider how lucky you are because for most people including myself, u-boot doesn't see ANY firmware upgrade files on the SD card at all. Ever.

 

[z32fairlady]

The version of u-boot that GPH supplied on the GP2X was on sale cheap from Dodgy Brothers Incorporated and can sometimes see a firmware upgrade file on the SD card when there is none there at all. So it happily goes off to upgrade the firmware with absolutely nothing, or at most, with random data it plucked out of its binary ass. But just consider how lucky you are because for most people including myself, u-boot doesn't see ANY firmware upgrade files on the SD card at all. Ever.

​

Surely I'm a lucky one.

Just hope someday later, when the firmware goes opensource, somebody can make a bootloader which will not look for updates at boot time...
[Well, such feature is only for stopping people from enjoying the console - Just like somebody else did.]

Long live lilo and grub. :lol:

 

[Vimacs]

I bet this wasn't supposed to go in the GP32 FAQ section. :rolleyes:

​

you are right
moved!

 

[hercule18]

fat is named to be faster for the gp2x than fat32.
Just put the card in after the gp2x booted and you are 100% on the secure side.

​

This is what I do, im formated in fatty as well. Plus the benefit of putting it in after boot is that the boot wont freeze as often. Like my stupid gp2x freezes 50% of the time at a bootup if I have the card in there.

​

But Fat file format cause probleme for flashing GP2x no?

Bye

Herc. h34r:

 

[Morgoth]

If you format the card in fat32 then are you 100% safe? Or should you still put the card in after the GP2x boots up?

 

[EvilDragon]

The version of u-boot that GPH supplied on the GP2X was on sale cheap from Dodgy Brothers Incorporated and can sometimes see a firmware upgrade file on the SD card when there is none there at all. So it happily goes off to upgrade the firmware with absolutely nothing, or at most, with random data it plucked out of its binary ass.

​

Not 100% correct - it flashes data directly from the SD-Card.
So you might have gp2xMAME where the bootloader should reside

Doesn't make a difference though.

 

[Emu&Co]

You can prevent this problem easily. Replace the U-Boot loader with that does not AutoUpdate. Sounds really bad, right? It isn't. I did it and it works very well. No Link in Forum, because I want to prevent that some people are bugging the coder that his U-Boot killed their GP2X. It will become open for everyone, soon.

 

[EvilDragon]

Just some update to the Autobricking:

I did receive a gp2x today to restore it via JTAG (yep, an autobricked one).

Luckily it had the SD-Card still in it.

While checking the card in my PC Cardreader, I found some directories I couldn't even access and a chkdsk found TONS of lost clusters.

I suspect faulty filesystems on the SD-Card to be the reason for a spontaneous autobricking.

That's probably why it only happens to a few people. I, for myself, sync the card each time I save something. My card is clean. And I never had an auto-brick.