Hardware My 1GHz Pandora just died

[HelenF]

I shut it down normally a couple of days ago. Today I switched it on, the LEDs blinked as if it was starting up, but nothing appeared on the screen. Maybe 10-20 seconds later, the LEDs all went out again and it won't do anything. I might have smelled a hint of something burning. I swapped the battery with my CC Pandora and both batteries seem to be fine.

I guess I should try to open it and see if anything looks burnt. But has anything like this happened before?

 

[Alperoot]

I am also having a similiar issue. (My screen looks really weird) All I know is Pandora LCD cables are very problematic.

 

[ingoreis]

Maybe your Coil 223F is gone broken.
Its only for the Backlight afaik.
When you put on your Pandora is she realy Died or do only nothing appear on the Screen?

Sometimes this Coil 223F go broken and you see
only with a strong external Light which you hold onto the Display its working but only no Backlight.

The other Hints:
Let the Battery out and try it only with Power Connector.
Most Pandoras work with that but before you do that let the Pandora out of Energy for a while for discharging all Energy.

Maybe you can try that also with an Mini USB Cable.

Here is a Picture of this Coil 223F
Maybe when you open your Pandora this is Defective.

 

[HelenF]

It's not just the screen backlight. When I try to turn it on, none of the LEDs come on.

Nothing with only the AC adaptor either (though I don't know if this one ever worked without battery). And I tried with the 2 different batteries that are both fine in the other Pandora.

I remember hearing if the NAND bootloader is corrupted, none of the LEDs will come on, so should I try to make the special bootable SD card and where do I find the instructions for that again?

 

[ingoreis]

Maybe this Link will help you:
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/bad-flash-bricked-jtag.75601/#post-1333129
There are the Orders and a Rescue DiskDump Image.

 

[edgex004]

I tend to just use this: https://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=sd-install-2011-03-10

Should work for you since you have another Pandora.

 

[ingoreis]

I tend to just use this: https://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=sd-install-2011-03-10

Should work for you since you have another Pandora.

When the Bootloader is broken you cannot boot the "normal" Zaxxon from SD because no "boot from SD1:1" can appear.
Try the Hints from my Link better for maybe recover the internal Bootloader.

 

[levi]

Fwiw, I got my Pandora into a state whereby it wouldn't boot, and none of the Leds would come on, but this was after I had failed to fit a new Lcd cable, and had struggled so much that I'd managed to deform the connector. I think, based on my investigations there was now a short circuit, possibly between the backlight + and -. The most succesful was hooking it up to my bench Psu via the croc clip ports on the mainboard. At somewhere above 4A at 5V the magic smoke was let out of the Lcd connector, so I removed that entirely and now the system runs fine - though only in tv-out mode now.

But if you've not has your pandora open and applied lateral friction to the inside of the Lcd connector, I doubt that's your problem.

 

[HelenF]

Does the rescue image start reflashing automatically?

 

[levi]

I don't know for sure what an 'accucell' is, but I think Ingo's post suggests you need to hold the R shoulder while trying to power up the unit (inserting the battery is probably the best way to do that, although getting the battery in and connected with one hand holding R might be tricky).

 

[ingoreis]

Does the rescue image start reflashing automatically?

Nope.

You must press start+R(shoulderbutton) while powering on and hold that for 2-3 Seconds until something appear.
Or was it PandoraButton+R(shoulderbutton)?...i am not more shure.

 

[HelenF]

I mean is it going to reflash automatically after it boots? Sounds like it does. So I don't want to test the rescue card on the good Pandora. And if I put it in the broken Pandora and nothing happens, that doesn't tell me anything, since it sounds like making the rescue card is kind of flaky.

 

[Wally]

You've checked the battery to see if it's snug?

 

[levi]

I mean is it going to reflash automatically after it boots? Sounds like it does. So I don't want to test the rescue card on the good Pandora. And if I put it in the broken Pandora and nothing happens, that doesn't tell me anything, since it sounds like making the rescue card is kind of flaky.

Well, you should be able to see if it's reflashing, since the LCD connected to the SD slot will be flashing like crazy as it reads off it, I'd assume. Although I am assuming the kernel in there is designed to light up the SD LEDs as appropriate - having never used it I can't say, but the standard reflashing ones do.

 

[HelenF]

The battery cover wouldn't stay on by itself and had sticky tape on it for a while. At the moment I'm trying to start the Pandora while holding the battery in place with my fingers, but I've not had any trouble making that work before.


I don't seem to have got my point across about the rescue card... making a rescue card that's going to work sounds rather hit-and-miss; I need a known-working rescue card to do a meaningful test on the broken Pandora; and if I test a working rescue card on the working Pandora it's going to erase it. It's also not very likely that the bootloader is the problem here.

On a normal full-flash card, can "delete rootfs.* files and then it will just flash the bootloader and keep the NAND", so I guess that's the same here. I don't particularly want to overwrite the bootloader on the CC with an older version either (though it shouldn't be too hard to put back). Which file is the bootloader flash file? What would happen if I deleted it? If that's no good, can I replace it with the one from the 1.75 full-flash?

-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   5270992 Nov 13  2014 bootf.tgz
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   5136008 Oct 18  2014 boot.scr
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root     23316 Dec 17  2012 MLO
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root       999 Dec 24  2011 README.TXT
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 326817792 Nov 13  2014 rootfs.img
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root       117 Nov 13  2014 rootfs.md5
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root    524288 Apr  4  2012 u-boot.bin
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   1206280 Dec 17  2012 uImage

Basically, I'd prefer to make a "boot from SD and do something to show it's alive" card that doesn't overwrite anything.

 

[ingoreis]

Okay when you try to make a Fresh Card.
I recommend a very Small SD Card like max 2 GB
fresh formated to Fat not Fat32.

This MLO File MUST be copied first an then the other Files...that is VERY Important.

I whish you good luck but what you wrote sounds not good until yet.

Try this with differrent SD Cards..maybe you have Luck like me and find one who work "out of the Box"

 

[HelenF]

Thanks for trying, but I don't think you understood my question. Even if I can make a good rescue card, it probably still won't work, because the problem with the Pandora is probably something else.


I opened the base, and there's nothing obviously burnt on the underside of the PCB.

 

[HelenF]

In the end I tried booting my rescue cards on the CC unit, and they didn't seem to work. I probably don't have a suitable SD card. However, are we even sure about the key combination? The posts here have suggested to use R, Start+R, PandoraButton+R; but the wiki and the big boot guide seem to be saying that MLO SD card boot is just Start.
https://pandorawiki.org/Boot_setup#MLO_bootloader
http://blogs.distant-earth.com/wp/i...ting-nand-layouts-and-general-firmware-fluff/
Or is it Start+R to get the boot menu (and if I use just Start, the MLO bootloader on the rescue card boots the remaining stages from the NAND)? In that case, on a working Pandora, the result won't look any different if the MLO bootloader on the rescue card worked or not...


And after taking apart the 1GHz unit, I don't seem to be able to get the base back on with the stylus holder in place. The stylus holder always moves and jams something when I try to position the clips. (When I've taken apart the CC unit previously, I never had a problem with this.) Any tips here?

 

[levi]

Just R shoulder when booting up (either plug in a charger or use the power switch) has always worked for me.

 

[HelenF]

Normally X-Loader and U-Boot load from the NAND, and holding R makes U-Boot show the boot menu (so you can then boot from SD card using the high-level boot config). The second link in my previous post has the details. Sounds like Start by itself will try to load X-Loader from the "MLO" file on the SD card, but what happens next I'm not sure.


I got the 1Ghz back together. The video says to put the clip side in first (which would make sense as that side comes out second), but I had better luck putting the other side in first. And then I noticed my B-button had come unseated and had to open it again. But it's all in the right place now I think. I'm not very good at this. If I send the Pandora to ED now, maybe I'll hear "the original problem would have been fixable but you broke something else taking it apart"