Hardware Pandora turning on and off at boot, also vertical stripes (video)

[Hitnrun]

Hello,

after leaving the Pandora 48 hours connected to the power output and doing heavy processing (compiling), it turned off and wouldn't turn on anymore.

After 2 days doing lots of things, like emptying yhe battery, using another battery, it sorts of turns on now, but on boot it flashes the OpenPandora logo, and sometimes there are green/blue vertical stripes on the screen, and never manages to go past that.

I recorded a video of this happening:

Does someone knows how can I fix this?

 

[EvilDragon]

Hm, usually something like that means it doesn't have enough power for some reason... but if the battery is stil fine, that shouldn't be an issue.
What SD Card are you trying to boot from?
Tried booting a pure flasher card as well?
Maybe the NAND is meh and your SD Card doesn't like this as well?

 

[Hitnrun]

I got a multimeter, and both batteries seems to have 4V, que battery that was on the Pandora when I left it 48h turned on seems a little "stuffed", but the other one doesn't.
I tried to boot without any SD card, and on the video I had an SD card with a firmware to reflash, but while I am selecting things on the boot menu, it also turns off.
You mean boot the OS from the card, not only the firmware? How I do that, holding R at boot also? Wouldn't it have the same problem as with the firmware SD?

Other thing is that I have 2 batteries, the first one is a little stuffed, and the second one I used very little in all these years, maybe they both have problems. But with a multimeter they seem to have constant 4V, can it have problem even with this?

 

[levi]

I can't see the power light dimming which usually happens when there's a power brownout in my experience. IIRC that pandora logo comes up to hide the initial boot messages. Those stripes are a bit of a mystery though - they might be the signs of a LCD cable on the way out, but the way they appear regularly seems odd, as if they're tied to the OS failing to boot or something. Without further evidence of that, I propose it's something the framebuffer does when it's being rebooted.

But yeah, I suspect your OS installation is basically toast. Without seeing messages, I can't tell what's wrong, which is why I never bother to set those screens up on my own setups.

If that screen actually hides the kernel loading, then it could be a kernel problem or it could be a uboot problem. I just don't remember because I never see that screen on the TV-out view.

 

[Mr_Loon]

but while I am selecting things on the boot menu, it also turns off.

Could it be a battery contact issue?

Try cleaning the contacts & maybe wedge some paper between the battery and battery cover to assure a firm contact.

Good luck

 

[Hitnrun]

I can't see the power light dimming which usually happens when there's a power brownout in my experience. IIRC that pandora logo comes up to hide the initial boot messages. Those stripes are a bit of a mystery though - they might be the signs of a LCD cable on the way out, but the way they appear regularly seems odd, as if they're tied to the OS failing to boot or something. Without further evidence of that, I propose it's something the framebuffer does when it's being rebooted.

But yeah, I suspect your OS installation is basically toast. Without seeing messages, I can't tell what's wrong, which is why I never bother to set those screens up on my own setups.

If that screen actually hides the kernel loading, then it could be a kernel problem or it could be a uboot problem. I just don't remember because I never see that screen on the TV-out view.

Can I disable the OpenPandora logo to see the linux messages?

Could it be a battery contact issue?

Try cleaning the contacts & maybe wedge some paper between the battery and battery cover to assure a firm contact.

Good luck

This Pandora has always had battery contact problems, I always used a paper inside the battery to press it better, but I never got a problem like this, that I couldn't solve removing and putting the battery back at most 2 times. This is the most strange thing.
[doublepost=1520722742,1520714869][/doublepost]Can this have something to do with the AC adapter? I was one of the early adopters, maybe I have the ones with problems?
I don't know much about electricity, but using a multimeter on my AC, depending on where I touch the plug it stays at zero, and on other parts it go correctly to 5V, and on other parts it goes up and down randomly. This don't seem to happen on other ACs I have here.

 

[levi]

You aren't trying to power this without a battery are you? If not, the only impact a dodgy AC adaptor can have to your internal hardware is the battery going slowly flat. If you can get the system booted, you can see the charge current in the system info app, or by catting somewhere in /proc/sys/class/power_supply (or something like that).

 

[Hitnrun]

You aren't trying to power this without a battery are you? If not, the only impact a dodgy AC adaptor can have to your internal hardware is the battery going slowly flat. If you can get the system booted, you can see the charge current in the system info app, or by catting somewhere in /proc/sys/class/power_supply (or something like that).

No, my Pandora doesn't turn on without a battery.
This AC always was a little troublesome, sometimes I needed to turn around the plug in the pandora, only in certain positions the red charging light would turn on. But it was easy to find one.
The only "wrong" thing I made that I read after on the forums, was putting the battery WHILE it was connected to the AC, I read everywhere not to do it, but no one explained why. Can this have any serious problem?

 

[levi]

The theory is that it may cause the pandora's charge chip to get confused and to overcharge your battery, somewhat reducing it's charge life. I didn't think anything more serious was possible, although with lithium ion there's always the possibility of an internal short forming and setting fire to the thing. I guess the latter hasn't happened to you though, and the former probably isn't a major concern to you these days. And I've never actually heard of this happening to anyone in real life, but there's always the possibility you're the first.

I guess it's possible it got the charge chip so confused it basically nuked itself and limited the current it's willing to supply ever, but personally I'd try to rule out everything else before assuming that's the case. That AC adaptor cable does sound like it might be on its last legs - I use cheap USB to PSP charge cables these days (the PSP uses the same connector at 5V), and I keep having to buy new ones when that happens to mine. Cables don't last forever unfortunately, although the pandora's charge cable is significantly better made than these cheap thin USB cables I keep buying.

 

[bukkit]

Can I disable the OpenPandora logo to see the linux messages?

If you have a bootable SD card, you can put a "debug" and a "psplash=false" into the bootargs line of the autoboot.txt (create it in the root of the SD card next to the bootmenu.txt file, if it doesn't exist). It will look sth like this:

setenv bootargs debug root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rw rootwait vram=6272K omapfb.vram=0:3000K psplash=false mmc_core.removable=0
fatload mmc 0:1 0x80300000 uImage-3
bootm 0x80300000

Use your bootargs line (and the other two) from autoboot.txt or bootmenu.txt as a template and only add the parts mentioned. The other parts have to match your installation, and you should keep them as they are.

 

[levi]

IIRC in the R-button uboot menu, you can edit the live boot.txt on a temporary basis somehow (but it's a number of years not since my LCD died, so I'm doing this entirely from memory). You could probably edit those option in as a try-out, but I'm afraid I can't remember how you actually do it.

 

[Hitnrun]

I will do these tests, but in the meantime I ordered a new battery from DragonBox, and will try to find a PSP charger, didn't have much luck on this one.
@EvilDragon Does the DragonBox sells PSP or OpenPandora chargers?

 

[EvilDragon]

I will do these tests, but in the meantime I ordered a new battery from DragonBox, and will try to find a PSP charger, didn't have much luck on this one.
@EvilDragon Does the DragonBox sells PSP or OpenPandora chargers?

Not right now, but I still have some left, so I'll see if I can add them soon.