White Screen = Irretrievably Bricked?

[oneandoneis2]

None of my SD cards would upgrade the firmware, so I finally bought a Fuji 256MB one & gave it a go.

Yay, the frimware upgrade message appeared. And stayed there, for about five hours, until I finally decided it was locked up. And now, I get the white screen that slowly fills with coloured lines...

Is this still an "irretrievably bricked" unit, or is there a solution that Google hasn't found me?

 

[yaustar]

I take it that you are not getting as far the Green loading screen?

 

[CRP]

None of my SD cards would upgrade the firmware, so I finally bought a Fuji 256MB one & gave it a go.

Yay, the frimware upgrade message appeared. And stayed there, for about five hours, until I finally decided it was locked up. And now, I get the white screen that slowly fills with coloured lines...

Is this still an "irretrievably bricked" unit, or is there a solution that Google hasn't found me?

​

it is bricked, I had your exact same experience last week. so now, either you send it back and get a replacement, or do what I did and build a JTAG cable. Once you have that (it is easier than it might seem at first and quite cheap), you can restore the gp2x to full functionality easily, and as a side effect, you will go about messing with the device with a much lighter heart, since you know you can restore it anytime

 

[DaveC]

None of my SD cards would upgrade the firmware, so I finally bought a Fuji 256MB one & gave it a go.

Yay, the frimware upgrade message appeared. And stayed there, for about five hours, until I finally decided it was locked up. And now, I get the white screen that slowly fills with coloured lines...

Is this still an "irretrievably bricked" unit, or is there a solution that Google hasn't found me?

​

it is bricked, I had your exact same experience last week. so now, either you send it back and get a replacement, or do what I did and build a JTAG cable. Once you have that (it is easier than it might seem at first and quite cheap), you can restore the gp2x to full functionality easily, and as a side effect, you will go about messing with the device with a much lighter heart, since you know you can restore it anytime

​

How do you build a JTAG and what software do you use to restore it?

 

[deadlychicken22]

How do you build a JTAG and what software do you use to restore it?

​

quickly searching the wiki I came up with THIS

 

[oneandoneis2]

I take it that you are not getting as far the Green loading screen?

Yep. Bit annoyed that U-Boot got killed by an SD card that only had a kernel image on it, but so it goes. . .

I had your exact same experience last week. so now, either you send it back and get a replacement, or do what I did and build a JTAG cable

Oo, does Craig do replacements for bricked GP2Xs?

Electronics aren't my strong point (to put it mildly ) but I may be able to cobble together the JTAG interface. What's involved in fixing the firmware once you've got a working interface..?

 

[joyrider]

this thread has a jtag kit with software & shematic for the gp2x. it's in spanish doh but someone posted the english instructions with it, it seems u'll have to use the image shematic to create it and not the text version. using a tv out cable http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=25615&st=15

also does someone here want to build me a jtag cable for my gp2x. u see i'm affraid of bricking it and i don't dare updating my firmware but if i got a jtag cable like the one in the thread above i might try it out. I'll pay for the cable and the workhours spend on it as well as the shipping costs etc. i just don't understand anything about those shematics or electronics in general. anyone up to it ? thanks

 

[CRP]

this thread has a jtag kit with software & shematic for the gp2x. it's in spanish doh but someone posted the english instructions with it, it seems u'll have to use the image shematic to create it and not the text version. using a tv out cable http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=25615&st=15

also does someone here want to build me a jtag cable for my gp2x. u see i'm affraid of bricking it and i don't dare updating my firmware but if i got a jtag cable like the one in the thread above i might try it out. I'll pay for the cable and the workhours spend on it as well as the shipping costs etc. i just don't understand anything about those shematics or electronics in general. anyone up to it ? thanks

​

I followed the instructions given at the thread mentioned by joyrider. You need some sw called JTAGKIT which can be had at the spanish board, but registration on that board is required to get the files. I am not sure about the copyright status of the files, since the host program seems to be by Dignisys.

Building the interface is extremely easy, the only difficulty is soldering the contacts of the ext-port connector, because it is very small.
I used a TV out cable which i bought together with the gp2x, and connected the cable to the appropriate pins leaving the tv connections in place. So basically now I have a tv+jtag cable

Once you have the interface in place, if you have Linux on your pc, just start host program, run the script and wait - very straightforward. The spanish guy also supplies everything needed in a floppy disk image which creates a single floppy linux system. So you just transfer the image to a disk, boot off of it and run the host+script.

 

[oneandoneis2]

Maybe I'm missing something, but the instructions in the thread linked above seem to call for a PC running Windows & posessing a floppy drive.

As I'm running Linux & have no option of booting off a floppy, are there alternate instructions available?

 

[Waninkoko]

Windows isn't needed. I use Linux and I have been able to write floppy and boot it

 

[oneandoneis2]

Glad to hear it.

Of course, I still have the problem of not having a floppy drive. But I can work round that: what's on the floppy?

 

[CRP]

Glad to hear it.

Of course, I still have the problem of not having a floppy drive. But I can work round that: what's on the floppy?

​

On a Linux box there's no need to make a floppy, on the spanish board, besides the JTAGKIT.zip, there is also a jtag.tar.gz which contains host program, bootloader binary and script, so it is even easier than on a winbox

 

[oneandoneis2]

Hmm... odd, I don't seem to have that file. . . I'll go download-hunting again.

Cheers!

 

[Waninkoko]

You can write floppy image into a CD.