Noob's guide to debricking through ATK :D

[knc1]

Well, I left "read and write memory" off the list because I assumed that was obvious.

[Pixelpille]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

That is normal behavior for a bricked kindle even when it CAN be debricked using the simple debricking method (flashing known good partitions). USB Downloader mode does not write to the eink display. A bricked kindle does not reliably indicate charge status with the power LEDs.

If you are using the 3.0.2 images, be sure that you properly extracted the multi-part zip file. Is the total size of mmcblk0p1 about 350MB?

Just checked back to my Kindle: While still on wall charger the LED did'nt show anything. Just un- and replugged it and it's back in orange. So good to know, that there should be nothing to see...

I'm using the 3.0.2 images and the mmcblk0p1 has a size of 346MB and the extracted image has the size of 650MB.

Nevertheless I'll let the K3 charge for the night and check back to it tomorrow morning.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Pixelpille

Just checked back to my Kindle: While still on wall charger the LED did'nt show anything. Just un- and replugged it and it's back in orange. So good to know, that there should be nothing to see...

I'm using the 3.0.2 images and the mmcblk0p1 has a size of 346MB and the extracted image has the size of 650MB.

Nevertheless I'll let the K3 charge for the night and check back to it tomorrow morning.

That all sounds good. There have been multiple success reports for K3 debricking, including one that used the 3.0.2 images that you downloaded, so it should work for you too.

[Pixelpille]

Went back to my K3 with the ATK: still throws "Failed to initial flash or Do not support this Flash, please reset the target" at me.

Also tried to use the k3flasher, which also doesn't seem to work for me

pixelpille@ubuntu:/mnt/HDD/k3flasher$ sudo ./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin program 0x00041000 kernel.bin 
I: found suitable device
E: wrong transfer length, wanted to receive 8 bytes but received 4 bytes.
I: above error can be ignored, it's due to the device being in ROM kernel mode
I: RAM kernel should be running now. Trying to re-open device: .
I: got it.

and then after a while (few seconds)

E: reading data from device: LIBUSB_ERROR_NO_DEVICE
E: aborting. It is suggested you power-cycle the device.

Are they supposed to say anything like "wohoo, something happened" ?
Any other hints?

[hawhill]

Yep, the device seems to be in a reboot loop. Especially since k3flasher was able Tod establish a connection, though not for long. Unfortunately, the conclusion I have left is broken Hardware (most prominently the battery, but not necessarily).

[knc1]

Originally Posted by hawhill

Yep, the device seems to be in a reboot loop. Especially since k3flasher was able Tod establish a connection, though not for long. Unfortunately, the conclusion I have left is broken Hardware (most prominently the battery, but not necessarily).

I would vote for a dis-charged battery also.

Since it shuts down shortly after it starts re-programming the flash, a power hungry operation, a low-voltage shutdown makes sense.

Recharge from a wall charger.
Note: The battery management chip defaults to a 20 hour curve, so re-charge for at least 24 hours or more.

[bigtj1]

So after reading some of the latest posts it would seem that mine is stuck in the reboot loop or something because of how the kernel/rootfs loading was interrupted in some way. After trying to let it charge over night and throughout the day, it seems that at some point the charging stops or something because the LED indicator shuts off after at least more than an hour (can't be certain of the exact time because I leave it over night). I've popped the back off the K3G, hit the master reset switch, pulled the battery and tried letting it charge over night and up to around 24 hours with no success. It will let me install the kernel but will drop out of the loader after about 5 minutes or so once I've started the rootfs. Fairly certain it is a battery issue because if I try to start it again it takes less time before it fails the second time. Any further suggestions are much appreciated.

[knc1]

Ever hear of a "line break"?
You can create one using the key typically marked: "Enter" on your keyboard.

And, while your editing your post into something readable . . . .
Please tell us about how and when in the process described you re-charged the battery.

There was only 6 hours between when we suggested that you do that and when you had "left it to recharge over-night and all day".

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

... There was only 6 hours between when we suggested that you do that and when you had "left it to recharge over-night and all day".

bigtj1 has only made two posts, and they were 4 days apart. You might be confusing two members with your comment if it was addressed to bigtj1 here (no quote provided to establish context).

@bigtj1: If you know anybody with another K3, perhaps you could convince them to let you try temporarily swapping batteries with them to see if that is the problem.

[knc1]

Did I mis-read the post headers? Must be becoming human.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Pixelpille

- - - snip - - -
"When using K3Flasher ... "

E: reading data from device: LIBUSB_ERROR_NO_DEVICE
E: aborting. It is suggested you power-cycle the device.

Are they supposed to say anything like "wohoo, something happened" ?

K3Flasher is built against libusb-1.0 which does not provide notification of a device's appearance or disappearance.

That sort of notification system is proposed for libusb-1.1

So with libusb-1.0 the best that can be done is to try to use a device once known to be there, only to discover that it is gone.

And since USB client devices rarely say: "Goodbye" before unplugging, even with libusb-1.1 it may not be possible to give a more informative message than "Gone".

[Clemster]

Am having exactly the same issue in ATK as Pixelpille and others. Tried both the 3.3 and 3.0.2 kernel files with no success. Keep getting the "Failed to initial flash or Do not support this Flash, please reset the target" message regardless of any combination of files or sequence of holding the power and volume - buttons.

One odd phenomena that started happening is that the Windows XP device manager started discovering the device, but alternately as "SE Blank Ringo" and "MX".

I don't think that it's a hardware issue ... the screen is frozen on my "Main" screen and seems to show a severely drained battery (with the exclamation point). I don't think that the battery is bad though, since I pulled it out after my last attempt at recovery and multi-meter showed that it had a full charge.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[bigtj1]

So I have now tried switching batteries and i was able to successfully flash the kernel and rootfs but I now have no luck rebooting my kindle. I unplugged the device after the flash said it was successful I unplugged it then tried to reboot but no light came on and nothing on the screen or otherwise happened.

Not entirely sure where to go from here, I think that trying to flash it so many times unsuccessfully has left it broken/frozen permanently. Certainly welcome to any other suggestions.

[hawhill]

There's a chance left that the boot loader is corrupt. I will upload an image of it in a few hours.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by hawhill

There's a chance left that the boot loader is corrupt. I will upload an image of it in a few hours.

Thankfully, the bootloader is pure gpl, so it can be attached here.