Spontaneous Gp2x Bricking

[solace]

Same thing happened to me. My GP2X (part of V001-500 batch) also just spontaneously killed itself. No firmware was on the SD at the time.

GBAX haven't exactly been responsive when I asked for a refund. They ignored several e-mails, but eventually they told me to send it back, which I did.

However, GBAX (Jacquelyn) now seem to be implying that I must have done something to it, and are giving me the run around:

As the GP2X you returned to us no longer boots we have to establish why, as it
was a fully working console, which had no problems booting, when it was
despatched to you.

Personally, I think that's a little out of order. I'm not the only person that has experienced this. At least I ordered via credit card, so I will just get the bank to reverse the charge. If GPH ever fix the spontaneous bricking in a future release, I might be willing to give it a go. No way I'd order from GBAX again though.

 

[lucoxade]

Same thing happened to me. My GP2X (part of V001-500 batch) also just spontaneously killed itself. No firmware was on the SD at the time.

GBAX haven't exactly been responsive when I asked for a refund. They ignored several e-mails, but eventually they told me to send it back, which I did.

However, GBAX (Jacquelyn) now seem to be implying that I must have done something to it, and are giving me the run around:

As the GP2X you returned to us no longer boots we have to establish why, as it
was a fully working console, which had no problems booting, when it was
despatched to you.

Personally, I think that's a little out of order. I'm not the only person that has experienced this. At least I ordered via credit card, so I will just get the bank to reverse the charge. If GPH ever fix the spontaneous bricking in a future release, I might be willing to give it a go. No way I'd order from GBAX again though.

​

How does that quote imply anything? I think we would all like to establish why there are some lemmings amidst the community

 

[solace]

Same thing happened to me. My GP2X (part of V001-500 batch) also just spontaneously killed itself. No firmware was on the SD at the time.

GBAX haven't exactly been responsive when I asked for a refund. They ignored several e-mails, but eventually they told me to send it back, which I did.

However, GBAX (Jacquelyn) now seem to be implying that I must have done something to it, and are giving me the run around:

As the GP2X you returned to us no longer boots we have to establish why, as it
was a fully working console, which had no problems booting, when it was
despatched to you.

Personally, I think that's a little out of order. I'm not the only person that has experienced this. At least I ordered via credit card, so I will just get the bank to reverse the charge. If GPH ever fix the spontaneous bricking in a future release, I might be willing to give it a go. No way I'd order from GBAX again though.

​

How does that quote imply anything? I think we would all like to establish why there are some lemmings amidst the community

​

Well, that quote is the reason specified for not issuing the refund right now. I don't care if they investigate the cause of the lemming machines, but I don't see why that should delay the refund being issued. They can do that on their time, not mine.

 

[Eolair]

Same thing happened to me. My GP2X (part of V001-500 batch) also just spontaneously killed itself. No firmware was on the SD at the time.

GBAX haven't exactly been responsive when I asked for a refund. They ignored several e-mails, but eventually they told me to send it back, which I did.

However, GBAX (Jacquelyn) now seem to be implying that I must have done something to it, and are giving me the run around:

As the GP2X you returned to us no longer boots we have to establish why, as it
was a fully working console, which had no problems booting, when it was
despatched to you.

Personally, I think that's a little out of order. I'm not the only person that has experienced this. At least I ordered via credit card, so I will just get the bank to reverse the charge. If GPH ever fix the spontaneous bricking in a future release, I might be willing to give it a go. No way I'd order from GBAX again though.

​

I think just about any retailer will try to establish the reason a returned item is broken. AFAIK, it's standard practice as well as common sense. If items start to break down they need to know why so they can prevent it.
Also if they can prove it's the customers fault then they are fully within their rights to demand compensation for fixing the problem.

 

[solace]

I think just about any retailer will try to establish the reason a returned item is broken. AFAIK, it's standard practice as well as common sense. If items start to break down they need to know why so they can prevent it.
Also if they can prove it's the customers fault then they are fully within their rights to demand compensation for fixing the problem.

Yeah, that's all very well. However, this is a known issue, and the GP2X seems to have a tendancy to auto-brick in this exact way. I have never dealt with a retailer who doesn't refund immediatelly in a case like this. I've only had the thing a week, and it died. That's just not acceptable.

As I said, it really doesn't matter. In the UK, there are pretty strong consumer rights, and it really isn't a problem to get the money back from GBAX. However, combined with the completely inaccurate information on their website (MAME support, codec support, battery life, stock availablity etc.), as well as the difficulty in getting replies to my e-mails, I don't exactly view GBAX as the pinnacle of e-commerce. In fact, trading standards would probably agree with me here.

I really don't want to get into a debate about GBAX. I'm just stating my experience with this self-bricking issue, in case anyone else finds themselves in the same position.

 

[TripHamer]

Even the PC puts up a warning before flashing the firmware and makes you actually select yes before flahsing.

I think that would be a simple failsafe for them to program in.

 

[reallynotnick]

Even the PC puts up a warning before flashing the firmware and makes you actually select yes before flahsing.

I think that would be a simple failsafe for them to program in.

​

That would have been a nice feature (who flashes pc's? never even heard of it...) would have really saved my gp2x.

 

[Saxton_boy]

Even the PC puts up a warning before flashing the firmware and makes you actually select yes before flahsing.

I think that would be a simple failsafe for them to program in.

​

Yeah. It all sounds TOO easy to "Brick"

(& on a PC you "flash" your bios firmware when updating)

 

[peter.stegemann]

Even the PC puts up a warning before flashing the firmware and makes you actually select yes before flahsing.

And I don't know any PC motherboard factored today that does not have a recovery BIOS to reflash from a disk if flashung failed. I had to do that earlier this year ;-)

 

[nubie]

Even the PC puts up a warning before flashing the firmware and makes you actually select yes before flahsing.

And I don't know any PC motherboard factored today that does not have a recovery BIOS to reflash from a disk if flashung failed. I had to do that earlier this year ;-)

​

I bricked(? tortilla-ed?) my nForce mobo, Shuttle charged me $20 to send me a new rom chip.

I am not saying there isn't a flash from floppy, there is, I am saying you can mess up anything if you try hard enough.

I think I was upgrading to try and make my cpu clockable from inside windows, lesson-> don't flash bios at 3:00 in the morning, you can screw it up.

 

[5465756e]

This is most definitely a serious bug. We should definitely find a solution as so many people are experiencing this problem and this number will probably only grow.

It should be fairly simple to build a JTAG cable. Is the full binary available? If not maybe GPH or Craig or can provide it? (gbax says they can flash the units once the cables come available, so they must have access to the bin) or maybe someone could dump it from a working machine. Then it should be possible to do a restore.

I'm still waiting for my GP2X So I can't help very much at the moment.

 

[Mentor]

maybe it would be more sensible if they made the flashing only possible Via the Jtag cable and did away with the boot loader, that way anyone who had it go belly up could instantly rectify the problem via the cable, since they would have to have the cable to do the upgrade, plus you wouldn`t get devices self destructing since it wouldn`t have the bootloader thingy getting in a mess and fouling up since it would be removed, and anyone who wanted a (post release) machine upgraded could just either get themselves a Jtag cable or send it back to Gbax to be upgraded for a nominal fee (say postage and handling), that way I can`t see that anything could go belly up, in fact I shouldn`t think it would Gbax a fortune to bundle a cable, theres a guy on the local market makes up long monitor leads for £5 each, it shouldn`t be that expensive to do that sort of thing for a Jtag lead, my Rio Riot has a weird custom USB lead for downloading and flashing, same sort of thing imo.



Mentor.

 

[Z80]

maybe it would be more sensible if they made the flashing only possible Via the Jtag cable and did away with the boot loader, that way anyone who had it go belly up could instantly rectify the problem via the cable, since they would have to have the cable to do the upgrade,

I was thinking about that too, as well as fixing an accidently bricked unit it let's you develop all software on the unit from scratch, giving more freedom.

(by the way I haven't got mine yet, looking at the threads around here, it seems like it's going to be a lot of fun and games trying to get it working right. :lol

Is the full binary available? If not maybe GPH or Craig or can provide it?

Don't you just take the regular firmware update and copy it to the right address on the chip, like the bootsector for a pc?

 

[5465756e]

Is the full binary available? If not maybe GPH or Craig or can provide it?

Don't you just take the regular firmware update and copy it to the right address on the chip, like the bootsector for a pc?

​

Yea, sort of (usually). But in this case it consists of 2 files (gp2xkernel.img and gp2xboot.img). I think that you only need to flash the boot loader, so you can do the rest using the SD card. The u-boot source is available right?

 

[Z80]

The u-boot source is available right?

Yeah, I don't think the bootloader is really the problem here since it's supposed to be open, you should be able to find it anywhere, it's just constructing the cable and finding or writing the JTAG software. Maybe you could take the GP32's JTAG adapter design here: http://www.cobbleware.com/gp32/gp32jtag.html and just change the leads to the appropriate pins for the GP2X, not too sure about that but it seems logical.

 

[OCA|]

Just thought I'd chime in - same thing just happened to me =(

-OCA|

 

[5465756e]

The u-boot source is available right?

Yeah, I don't think the bootloader is really the problem here since it's supposed to be open, you should be able to find it anywhere, it's just constructing the cable and finding or writing the JTAG software. Maybe you could take the GP32's JTAG adapter design here: http://www.cobbleware.com/gp32/gp32jtag.html and just change the leads to the appropriate pins for the GP2X, not too sure about that but it seems logical.

​

Ok. You could use any JTAG cable as it is a standard (on the JTAG side), or just make your own. Only the connector is GP2X specific As I understand it you need software which "knows" the MMSP 2 chip because only the connection and a few commands are standard. The rest is chip specific. So, you need some software which supports you cable and your (MMSP 2) chip. Does anyone know what they ship with the MMSP 2 dev kit?

Btw: This only happens when there is a SD card in the unit while booting right?

 

[critical]

Just thought I'd chime in - same thing just happened to me =(

-OCA|

​

Did you have any avi files in the root directory of your SD card?

[removed rant]

 

[OCA|]

No AVIs in the root. I had a bunch of directories, a bunch of programs, a utility program (the speaker fix thingee), a couple PNGs, a couple WADs, and four text files.

-OCA|

 

[5465756e]

Does this also happen when the 1.01 bootloader is installed (I have a 2nd generation GP2X)?