Hello Just got my hands on my first Pandora. Love it

[Zerendipity]

yeah i just tried taking the battery out whilst i went for a shower. I'm going to leave the battery out whilst i go out for the night and try it when i get back home. I can't get to anything mcobit. Dead when flicking any part of the unit. But seriously this sucks. Hoping for a miracle when i get back. Thanks again will update later

 

[Christoph.Krn]

The Pandora is unbrickable, by the way. Unless the hardware has a fault, the software can always be restored no matter what.

 

[Granitehead]

But in the worst case you need to do the reflashing via JTAG, don't you?

 

[TrashyMG]

Just curious on which method you use to re-flash the Pandora, the Wiki now has a few odd ball ways of doing it... wondering if we have a new bug.

http://pandorawiki.org/Firmware

 

[WizardStan]

But in the worst case you need to do the reflashing via JTAG, don't you?

That's only if absolutely everything goes completely tits up. We're talking major failure of the boot rom, static shock to the brain deal. Nothing should ever touch the boot rom. It is tiny and all but unmodifiable. It's possible the x-loader is broken, that's something that might have gotten an update: they're rare, but I think we have had one or two in the past few yeasr. If the x-loader is corrupt then nothing will happen, you'll see nothing and you can't even get to the boot menu. If that's the case you can make a special SD card with a new x-loader on it that will fix everything. ED has such a card, it's used to install the initial OS. If you put in a service ticket to dragonbox saying you think your x-loader may have gotten corrupted he can probably send you an img file which you can "burn" to an SD card.This is the only thing I can think of that can be solved with software, if it's not the x-loader then there's got to be a hardware fault.

 

[Zerendipity]

Hi guys I've just come home and everything is still unresponsive. No lights no flickering nothing. Its literally like trying to boot up a pandora with no battery or lead. Like i said originally I know very little about linux and open source software. if someone could point me in the direction of a how to fix this that would be great. heres a quick list of things I've done.

1. Everything was fine apart from the wifi problem previously mentioned in this post so reading what others had said I though a reflash might allow me to reconfigure the login password / keying situation allowing wifi to automatically authenticate.

2. decided to reflash the OS by following this link 

http://pandorawiki.org/Ångström

Downloaded zip file, extracted and I followed the instructions word for word up until number 7 where the device said press enter to turn off. When I pressed enter it turned off but...

3. any attempt from there to turn it on failed. 

4. I have tried leaving the battery out for 10 mins and also leaving it out for 5 hours.

5. It still won't turn on and plugging it in to charge makes no difference

6. I am leaving it on charge overnight now to see if anything happens but so far no lights and no response.

I know a lot of the guys responding know what they are talking about but i have the equivalent knowledge of a child trying to fix a car. Hopefully there is a fix for this. Im not sure what JTAG reflashing is so sorry about that. I think i know what unbrickable means but I don't really want to be the want who has achieved it. 

Again thanks if you can help. And if you can the simplest definitions are appreciated greatly.

Ben

 

[Christoph.Krn]

I think i know what unbrickable means [...]

Oh, "unbrickable" means pretty much exactly what I've written in my previous post: That the software can always be restored, no matter what, as long as the hardware is intact. Another way to phrase it would be to say that a device was made with the intent that even if it doesn't boot up because of a failed reflashing (or because of an other software accident), the software can always be reflashed.
As far as the Pandora is concerned, more information about the startup process can also be found at OpenPandora: Booting, NAND layouts and general firmware fluff., if you are interested.

I just had a closer look at http://pandorawiki.org/Ångström. You wrote that you followed the reflashing instructions "word for word up until number 7", but the instructions for flashing the NAND only have 5 bullet points. I blame the wiki page for this, it appears that you reflashed the operating system not onto the Pandoras interal space (the NAND), but rather onto the SD card itself (the Pandora is also capable of running operating systems off of SD cards), and something borked.

Right now I don't know why that would prevent the Pandora from simply booting from its NAND like it did before, though, and where I live it's pretty late right now, so that's all information from me for today, but maybe someone else will pick this up and continue from here in the meantime.

 

[WizardStan]

I am leaving it on charge overnight now to see if anything happens but so far no lights and no response.

I recommend against doing this. If it hasn't turned on by now it isn't going to and by leaving it charging overnight you risk it doing a constant trickle charge beyond full. I don't know how the charge chip is supposed to react when it tries to turn on its connected device and can't, but at best it will do nothing and at worst it will overcharge the battery.
From your description it definitely sounds like the x-loader got corrupted, if it were truly hardware it would have failed sooner, I would think, it wouldn't have waited until the exact moment that you decide to reboot to fail. The fact that it shut down on cue and immediately failed to start back up suggests that it is something in the boot process, something before the LEDs and splash screen even which is almost certainly the x-loader.

Send a support ticket to EvilDragon, tell him you think the boot loader is corrupt and you need a copy of his first boot SD card to flash a new copy. I've had to do this a few times with my BeagleBoard (same processor as in the Pandora) and it's a simple matter of formatting the SD card and copying files in the correct order, then you remove the battery, put the SD card in, hold the R trigger (or maybe it was the Pandora button for this particular boot sequence, or both, I can't remember exactly, ED will have better instructions) and then insert the battery. It should begin reflashing the boot loader to the firmware, take you through some diagnostics which I think you can just skip through, and BAM you are back in business.

 

[rygD]

I just had a closer look at http://pandorawiki.org/Ångström.You wrote that you followed the reflashing instructions "word for word up until number 7", but the instructions for flashing the NAND only have 5 bullet points. I blame the wiki page for this, it appears that you reflashed the operating system not onto the Pandoras interal space (the NAND), but rather onto the SD card itself (the Pandora is also capable of running operating systems off of SD cards), and something borked.

I sent him a PM saying the same thing.

 

[Zerendipity]

Thanks guys just turned this on for a quick look. Will get on with this as soon as i wake up properly.

 

[Zerendipity]

still no change. Have asked the dragon master for a little help. Thanks for all your input.If I get some success I'll post the results here for future reference if other have the same problem.