How Easy Is It To Brick This Thing?


Dingo_aus

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I'm holding off buying one because I fear I'll brick it updating firmware.

I'm a tinkerer and know I will want to update the firmware every new release (can't not have those latest fixes!) but on that point, how easy is it to brick this thing?

I know there are levels of "bricking" and some can be resurrected and some cannot be.

Better question.....are any retailers taking back bricked GP2x's and reflashing them? I'd get pretty pissed off at the whole thing have one shipped to Australia and then having it break.

Is there any news about using a JTAG interface to resurrect a brick? I play with microcontrollers, including lesser ARM7s all the time so am happy to pull apart a GP2x to hook up a JTAG (using the EXT would be easier though :) )

Has anyone in the community (not the factory) succesfully hooked up a JTAG yet?

I'd buy one in a heatbeat if I knew I could either return the brick or spend a lot of effort using a JTAG in the worst case scenario.

(on an aside, why oh why did it not ship with a backup kernel or boot from SD card capability???)
 
The highest risc of bricking is a "faulty" sd card and spontanous flashing with garbage, a ugly uboot error that should be corrected soon.
ALL retailers should take your gp2x back if it gets bricked without it beeing your fault (and even if they may).
At least gbax and gp2x.de have great service.
 
I'm holding off buying one because I fear I'll brick it updating firmware.

I'm a tinkerer and know I will want to update the firmware every new release (can't not have those latest fixes!) but on that point, how easy is it to brick this thing?

It's not that hard to do. Fortunatelly it's not hard to unbrick the gp2x either. Only if bootloader get damaged repairing starts to be difficult. Just remember to not put unformatted SD cards into gp2x and erase any "gp2xboot.img" file from it.

I know there are levels of "bricking" and some can be resurrected and some cannot be.

Basically there are "two levels" - crapped filesystem or/and kernel is one and it is relatively easy to fix by yourself. The second is not functional bootloader and this demands special equipment.

Better question.....are any retailers taking back bricked GP2x's and reflashing them? I'd get pretty pissed off at the whole thing have one shipped to Australia and then having it break.

Is there any news about using a JTAG interface to resurrect a brick? I play with microcontrollers, including lesser ARM7s all the time so am happy to pull apart a GP2x to hook up a JTAG (using the EXT would be easier though :) )

Has anyone in the community (not the factory) succesfully hooked up a JTAG yet?

Yes. Some developers are.

I'd buy one in a heatbeat if I knew I could either return the brick or spend a lot of effort using a JTAG in the worst case scenario.

(on an aside, why oh why did it not ship with a backup kernel or boot from SD card capability???)

No! It has such capability but the bootloader can be damaged as well...
 
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GPH don't talk at all. Well, not outside of Korea anyway. From here, it looks like GPH are ignoring the fact that there is a whole world outside their borders. That's usually a position taken up by the US, but GPH are doing well to ignore the rest of the world.
 
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Has anyone in the community (not the factory) succesfully hooked up a JTAG yet?

Yes. Some developers are.
The only information I have heard is from Squidge that it looks like the NAND is not directly accessible via JTAG. Is there any other information that anyone has released in regards to JTAG usage? We need to get this stuff documented.

Not much. There is code that works with the NAND so you can see how that works. From Dignsys's site I learned that they use a Macraigor compatible wiggler. Dignsys told me that they use a custom tool to flash. They sell the entire kit (software + cable) for 50 dollars, however the shipping from Korea is expensive.
 
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GPH don't talk at all. Well, not outside of Korea anyway. From here, it looks like GPH are ignoring the fact that there is a whole world outside their borders. That's usually a position taken up by the US, but GPH are doing well to ignore the rest of the world.

craigix will whip em into shape, GPH are his bitch < at least in the UK ;)
 
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GPH don't talk at all. Well, not outside of Korea anyway. From here, it looks like GPH are ignoring the fact that there is a whole world outside their borders. That's usually a position taken up by the US, but GPH are doing well to ignore the rest of the world.
I think you may find, actually, that they're starting to listen behind our backs. You remember when we were complaining about the image viewer not being useful for... well, much? Then suddenly, bang, GPH release a new version with all kinds of fancy things. Call that ignoring us? I don't think it is (in my opinion).
 
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I think you may find, actually, that they're starting to listen behind our backs. You remember when we were complaining about the image viewer not being useful for... well, much? Then suddenly, bang, GPH release a new version with all kinds of fancy things. Call that ignoring us? I don't think it is (in my opinion).


hey, i'm sure the korean forums complained just as much as we did .. i don't see how you can jump to this conclusion ..
 
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I think you may find, actually, that they're starting to listen behind our backs. You remember when we were complaining about the image viewer not being useful for... well, much? Then suddenly, bang, GPH release a new version with all kinds of fancy things. Call that ignoring us? I don't think it is (in my opinion).
hey, i'm sure the korean forums complained just as much as we did .. i don't see how you can jump to this conclusion ..
I can because I'm much too pro-GPH. And how can you jump to the conclusion that the Koreans complained as much as we did, unless you've been there and can read Korean, in which case I apologise.
 
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GPH don't talk at all. Well, not outside of Korea anyway. From here, it looks like GPH are ignoring the fact that there is a whole world outside their borders. That's usually a position taken up by the US, but GPH are doing well to ignore the rest of the world.
I think you may find, actually, that they're starting to listen behind our backs. You remember when we were complaining about the image viewer not being useful for... well, much? Then suddenly, bang, GPH release a new version with all kinds of fancy things. Call that ignoring us? I don't think it is (in my opinion).

I would imagine that the problems that we are having here (in english) are pretty much the same as they have in Korea. So, we might just be along for the ride. It would be nice to have someone that could be a go between...and so far it seems like Craigix is it.
 
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I just think that the fact that they only release updated firmware on their Korean site, which is only available to people in Korea who have the appropriate login, is enough to come to the conclusion that they don't understand that there is a large community called "the rest of the world".
 
Not much. There is code that works with the NAND so you can see how that works.
Where is that code?
From Dignsys's site I learned that they use a Macraigor compatible wiggler. Dignsys told me that they use a custom tool to flash. They sell the entire kit (software + cable) for 50 dollars, however the shipping from Korea is expensive.
I've seen it mentioned that it was around $100 for shipping. That's just ludicrous.
 
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The only information I have heard is from Squidge that it looks like the NAND is not directly accessible via JTAG. Is there any other information that anyone has released in regards to JTAG usage? We need to get this stuff documented.

I have to say that it's pretty unusual to program a system's flash memory directly via JTAG. Normally the CPU is controlled via the JTAG interface and loaded with a small program that reprograms the flash.
 
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