K3 Kindle 3 Diagnostics (interesting)

[yifanlu]

I'm sure many of you know about this already, but you can play with the Kindle diagnostics (the tests factory operators run before delivering the kindle to you) by creating a empty text file "ENABLE_DIAGS" on the Kindle USB root. Then after restarting the kindle, you will see the diagnostics menu. (NOTE: I don't know if this will damage your device or void your warranty or anything, do it at your own risk!).

Some interesting things I've noticed:
-You can set the device serial number, MAC address, and manufacturer code. However, I don't know what the side effects are, so I haven't tried it
-You can see advanced battery information such as voltage, current draw, temperature and more.
-You can stress test the kindle and see how long the battery will last on various conditions (wifi on, audio on, etc)
-Some lab126 employee wrote this interesting short story to test the TTS feature.

Dribble, a short and boring monologue by Nick
Vaccaro. This is actually a test of the Kindle
text to speech feature. So as not to get into
any copyright trouble, I made up the text myself,
so it is not going to be exciting or recognizable
as anything that you have heard before. Instead,
you will likely find it very boring and quite
mundane. It will not include any famous quotes,
coined sayings, or song lyrics sounding like a
monotone singer with an extreme lack of
inflection and absense of music. And you will
find that I will repeat myself after reading this
page for lack of anything interesting to say. I
could talk about some of my favorite foods, the
sports that excite me, even the girl I went out
with last night, but I know that you would not
care to hear that. What is important to you
right now is that this test pass certification,
not what I had for dinner last night, what I ate
for breakfast this morning, the color of the
girls hair, who my favorite supercross rider is,
or the names of my dirt bikes, which are Rooster,
Chicklet, Ladies Choice, and Hill Killer, by the
way. If I were to tell you what Marshall was
doing right now, you would laugh, but he might
not appreciate it, so I will not do that. Instead,
I will keep this a very boring test, one that the
operator will want to pass just so they do not
have to listen to this dribble again. Have you
heard enough yet? If you have not heard enough
yet and are enjoying this so much that you
really want to hear it again, just wait a second
and your wish will be granted.

and other stuff.

[knc1]

Rechecked on a K3 with v3.2.1 firmware.

Doesn't seem much use for anything other than hardware diagnostics. Unless you need to change your MAC address, PCB serial number, etc, etc.

I did not try the MoviNand entry because I did not know if it would be a destructive test. Will leave that one for someone else.

Note 1: It might be of use with K3's that have battery problems (or low charge) -
The battery management reporting shows the machine is in a 500ma recharge mode with an external power supply connected.

Note 2: There might be situations where this diags mode could export the user storage file system when the normal mode could not.
?? Hmm... How to make use of that? You need to put ENABLE_DIAGS on the exported file system to enter the hardware diagnostics. Still there might be some use for this.

[raccoon]

Tested and confirmed to work with Kindle 2.
Firmware: Kindle 2.5.8 (555370010)

Create an empty file named ENABLE_DIAGS in the root folder of the mounted Kindle volume. Unplug the Kindle and give it a full power cycle (reboot).

It should not have a ".txt" extension, so if you are using Windows make sure that you uncheck Hide Known Extensions in your folder options settings.

P.S. MoviNand tests are non-destructive. They just verify the filesystem.

MoviNand RootFS Verification
----------------------------

FAILURE

The rootfs failed md5sum verification
beause the following file had a bad md5sum:

/usr/lib/tts/speech/components/voicefont/vf_tom_fu ...

FS Version : 010-TNM0.9-055537
Build Date : Thu Jan 13 18:17:49 PST 2011

Press X to continue ...

Note, this device was never hacked, only firmware updated once. This gives me the impression that one shouldn't worry about a receiving a similar test failure.