Weirdest. Error. Ever.


moxie

The voice of reason, sense and exasperation
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Ok, so the thing is like this: This evening, I decided to try out a few things I'd wanted to try for a while. So I
  • Installed and tried GMenu2X - Beautiful!
  • Installed the g_ether.o module for USB networking on Linux
  • Installed the cpu/memconfig tool thingy
...and it was all beautiful. I noodled around in Gmenu, creating a few links, tried the oh-so-easy running squidgeSNES with random overclock...whatever. Excellent frontend, by the way. Then, i popped out to bland old boring menu to run the script that installed g_ether, and then I enabled networking and telnetted into the gp2x - Woot! Great fun to walk around the filesystem and try things like "cat /proc/cpuinfo" or "uname -a" to check the system. DIDN'T write anything anywhere, though, at least not as far as I am aware.

Anyways, then I exited, turned off the gp2x, turned it on again, and...

...the screen looks like it does when the batteries are about to fritz. It booted OK, but the colors are all off and the screen is almost impossible to read. I tried removing the batteries and putting it on AC power, but the same result. I tried jiggling the screen setup slider thingy to see if i could shock it back into reason - no go. I tried starting the cpu/memconfig tool thingy (CPU/LCD/RAM tuner seems to be the proper name) which I hadn't fiddled with earlier, and jiggle some values there just to try to shock it there, but no go. It is simply wrong, as I said like when it crashes due to battery failure or, possibly, like an old X window system (or the Amiga did the same thing, didn't it?) window, when some other application steals the palette (for those of us that remember that).

What gives? Anyone got any idea what has happened, or maybe at least how I could fix it? Coz right now it looks like "send back to dealer" and I really dont want that...

I'm not sure what section this should be under - It sure is no FAQ, and I found no "Weird-ass errors" section. If I missed it, feel free to move this thread there :)
 
Moxie posted on Oct 10 2006 at 03:14 PM said:
Ok, so the thing is like this: This evening, I decided to try out a few things I'd wanted to try for a while. So I
  • Installed and tried GMenu2X - Beautiful!
  • Installed the g_ether.o module for USB networking on Linux
  • Installed the cpu/memconfig tool thingy
...and it was all beautiful. I noodled around in Gmenu, creating a few links, tried the oh-so-easy running squidgeSNES with random overclock...whatever. Excellent frontend, by the way. Then, i popped out to bland old boring menu to run the script that installed g_ether, and then I enabled networking and telnetted into the gp2x - Woot! Great fun to walk around the filesystem and try things like "cat /proc/cpuinfo" or "uname -a" to check the system. DIDN'T write anything anywhere, though, at least not as far as I am aware.

Anyways, then I exited, turned off the gp2x, turned it on again, and...

...the screen looks like it does when the batteries are about to fritz. It booted OK, but the colors are all off and the screen is almost impossible to read. I tried removing the batteries and putting it on AC power, but the same result. I tried jiggling the screen setup slider thingy to see if i could shock it back into reason - no go. I tried starting the cpu/memconfig tool thingy (CPU/LCD/RAM tuner seems to be the proper name) which I hadn't fiddled with earlier, and jiggle some values there just to try to shock it there, but no go. It is simply wrong, as I said like when it crashes due to battery failure or, possibly, like an old X window system (or the Amiga did the same thing, didn't it?) window, when some other application steals the palette (for those of us that remember that).

What gives? Anyone got any idea what has happened, or maybe at least how I could fix it? Coz right now it looks like "send back to dealer" and I really dont want that...

I'm not sure what section this should be under - It sure is no FAQ, and I found no "Weird-ass errors" section. If I missed it, feel free to move this thread there :)

Have you tried reflashing the firmware?
 
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Is it messed up before linux has started (green screen I believe?), or the whole time? This could help narrow down if it was some startup thing (maybe g_ether loads at boot?) you installed that messed it up.
 
That happened when I added different values for the ram timings on an autorun.gpu script. so, I removed it. Ya, check if you played around with the new ram tweaks at all.
 
Nope, haven't tried reflashing the firmware yet. I'll try that later.

It is messed up even on the black screen w/logo, which to me means that it is weird even before linux gets a chance to do anything strange. Which in turn, in my belly, feels like hardware problems. But I don't like to think that, so I put my hands to my ears and go "lalalalala" :)

I haven't messed around with ram timings at all. The only thing my autorun.gpu does is to start Gmenu2x, and I'll try removing that, but it seems like it couldn't really be that either, since as I said, it's weird even before it gets to that point in the boot sequence. I'll try putting back the original g_ether too (well, that's probably easiest done by reflashing) but again...Don't see how that could mess things up that early.

Another thing it reminds me of is when one puts, say, a LiveLinux CD in an old laptop, and the drivers on the CD doesn't detect the graphics hardware properly, and leaves you with a half-working screen. It looks a bit that way, but once again - It's weirded out already on bootup, and that early in the process there can't be much in the way of drivers involved, can it?

The more I think on this, the more I start to believe it is properly fucked up. Gah!
 
Reflashing didn't help. Gah. Am I doomed to Ye Olde Incompetente GP Dealer, then? (And no, I don't mean Craig or ED, I mean the people that do this in Sweden - "Oh, yes, your ordered items are in stock. Sure. We'll send them out tomorrow. Some tomorrow. Did we tell you that when we say 'in stock', we mean 'in stock somewhere on the planet' and not actually in our stock inventory?")

*trundles off muttering, looking for "how to open up the gp2x" guides*
 
I've opened it up now, and actually found a small rubber bit wedged behind the screen. This could possibly have caused it to be weird (Y'know, pressure on an lcd kind of thing). No idea how it got there, though. If it works when I reassemble it, you'll hear it :)

If it still looks the same, I'll pop up a picture or two this evening (I have no digicamera here).

If it is now completely dead, at least I'll have forced my own hand to return it to the dealer :)
 
Taking it apart didn't help, although I must say it did come apart and back together very nicely, for something that obviously isn't built to let fat-fingered consumers into the unit. I did spy a suspicious looking trim pot situated slap bang on the actual flatcable to the screen, but it was a SMT component far to tiny for me to be able to adjust it here. Isn't that a very exposed position for a trimmer? Sitting on a flexing piece of plastic ribbon cable?

Not that I know that it is that trimmer that is out of whack, of course. As I said, I couldn't try adjusting it.

Ah, well. I'll try to produce a nice little piccie for you all to google at this evening (this now being high noon in these parts of the world).
 
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