Jtag Formatting Hang


vaiovann

Still Fresh
Joined
Jan 5, 2007
Messages
32
Hey I have a JTAG setup and have recently "re-bricked" my 2X after trying to revert back to FW 2.1.1 from 2.1.2. Anyways after I got the Kernel back up and running as well the U-Booter and after a dialog states that it is "Pathching" it begins "Formatting" the NAND Flash (and that's where I'm having my problems). I've tries a number of different FW thinking it could just be that (specifically 1.0 thru 3.0), and I have had the same luck. Got any ideas?


Addition: I have also been having problems with the JTAG GP2Xrecovery.exe application, specifically it detects the MMSP2 and tries to HALT the device, but almost never does.
This is a screenshot of the specific issue: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59556759/
 
vaiovann said:
Hey I have a JTAG setup and have recently "re-bricked" my 2X after trying to revert back to FW 2.1.1 from 2.1.2. Anyways after I got the Kernel back up and running as well the U-Booter and after a dialog states that it is "Pathching" it begins "Formatting" the NAND Flash (and that's where I'm having my problems). I've tries a number of different FW thinking it could just be that (specifically 1.0 thru 3.0), and I have had the same luck. Got any ideas?
Almost sure it is bad blocks on your NAND, what is the serial output of that (serial will be working as you will have a kernel by this point).

Also, I hate to say it but do you know what your doing? You seem to be talking about jTAG when its use is not appropriate (jTAG is only really of use to get a bootloader back onto a GP2X, then you restore using the existing functions in the bootloader, you bootloader seems to be in tact).

Trying all manor of firmware versions with there different file systems is going to get your NAND into a very messy state with incorrect bad block mappings.
vaiovann said:
Addition: I have also been having problems with the JTAG GP2Xrecovery.exe application, specifically it detects the MMSP2 and tries to HALT the device, but almost never does.
This is a screenshot of the specific issue: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59556759/



What is your parallel port set to in the BIOS?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Now I'm usually a little bit more intelligent about these sorts of things, but regardless I have gone and buggered up my 2X. Heres a brief explanation. I experienced some stability issues with FW 2.1.2 with over clocking (mostly in emulators) so I decided to revert back to 2.1.1. I decided that I would start over at 2.0.0 and upgrade the FW from there till 2.1.1, after starting the update with the 2.0.0 (with power through a AC adapter) the thing froze up on me and bricked itself. Figure no big deal so I correctly diagnosed to issue with the boot up (typical colored lines, no start up screen) and popped it into my Cradle and reflashed it with GP2Xrecovery.exe and got it back up to boot. Started the process over again with the 2.0.0 FW and hoped for the best... and nothing. My Gp2X starts up, gets past the green loading screen and tries to finish the FW install and never gets past the "Formatting" step. I plan on getting a serial cable to see what's going on but I don't know how much that will help. Any suggestions?
 
vaiovann said:
Now I'm usually a little bit more intelligent about these sorts of things, but regardless I have gone and buggered up my 2X. Here’s a brief explanation. I experienced some stability issues with FW 2.1.2 with over clocking (mostly in emulators) so I decided to revert back to 2.1.1. I decided that I would start over at 2.0.0 and upgrade the FW from there till 2.1.1, after starting the update with the 2.0.0 (with power through a AC adapter) the thing froze up on me and bricked itself. Figure no big deal so I correctly diagnosed to issue with the boot up (typical colored lines, no start up screen) and popped it into my Cradle and reflashed it with GP2Xrecovery.exe and got it back up to boot. Started the process over again with the 2.0.0 FW and hoped for the best... and nothing. My Gp2X starts up, gets past the green loading screen and tries to finish the FW install and never gets past the "Formatting" step. I plan on getting a serial cable to see what's going on but I don't know how much that will help. Any suggestions?
Ok, well the differences with Kernel's are not really going to effect overclocking to any great degree ;), trust me on that. As overclocking is hardly guaranteed anyway you’re lucky to get what you get (there are plenty of GP2X’s that don’t go > 200).

Anyway, onto what you have done, get a serial lead into your cradle and get a look at the boot log, this will give you an idea of what is going on. If your using Windows I can really recommend the latest version of Putty with serial port support for viewing the logs.

I STRONGLY suspect that you have a large number of marked BAD blocks on the NAND (that does not mean they are really bad, the YAFFS and NAND/OOB handling in the GPH firmware is chronic IMHO) and the YAFFS 'format' and resulting TAR extract is failing as it can't find enough good NAND to work with. If the log shows the TAR process segfaulting on the upgrade then NAND space/BAD blocks are the lightly cause.

Fixing this is a bit of a pain, I am happy to do it for you if you want or try talking you though it but getting the little specialist apps going may be a big job and a fair bit if grief.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you very much DJWillis for the specific answer you've given me. I plan on purchasing a serial cable very soon and already considered PuTTY for the job (use it at work), my thought was that the FW went berserk with the NAND file system and made a mess of it, problem was I couldnt tell if the installer was actually formatting a LARGE number of badly fragmented block or was just crashing. Hopefully this serial cable will shed some light on the problem. Thank you.

PS: DJWillis thanks for offering to help me out, but if it's all the same I would rather be talked through the process (maybe highly complicated procedure) to fix my damn 2X and learn a bit more about it in the process.
 
Back
Top