MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Tools Serial Jailbreaking your fw >= 5.6.x Kindle for Dummies

svg1234 · 12-11-2017, 02:56 PM

Joined mobileread yesterday mainly to express thanks to those who post on this forum and share valuable information. Special thanks to Grant2, knc1, NiLuJe, and Coplate. Amazing how much one can learn in just a couple of days of reading.

I also thought I should write a post to hopefully provide some help to those who might attempt this procedure.

I bought a Kindle PW3 last year. Hadn't used it much, but was aware that it could be jailbroken. Unfortunately, before doing enough research. I allowed it to update to 5.9.2 (32507...). As far as I have read, there is no software JB for that rev at this time (at least not in the public domain). When I saw this thread and realized that I could do it via the serial debug port, I knew I had to go for it.

I've done a lot of, um, "modding"

of h/w and s/w over the years.

I live in Canada and it's not easy to get parts/components locally. Availability is poor and if you do find parts, they are usually far more expensive than they should be (mostly due to insane shipping costs). We do the best we can given the reality of the situation.

I could not easily or inexpensively get a MicroFTX or Micro1v8 board. But I was able to find this circuit board:

https://www.electronicgeek.ca/collec...-port-montreal

It's based on the FT232R. Without knowing anything about arduion, or this tiny circuit board, I figured I'd be able to get it to work somehow for this application as long as it had a USB to serial chip on it. This board has "yp-05" stamped on the back. Turns out this circuit is quite popular and sold on ebay and many other online stores. It also turns out that the FTDI chip is a fake! (Confirmed by serial number). Oh well. It didn't give me any trouble, but it's probably better to try and get the real thing if you can.

That circuit (by default) outputs 5v or 3.3v (jumper selectable). From what I had read, the kindle uses 1.8v. I probably could have just gone ahead and used 3.3V, but I didn't want to take the chance of frying my kindle. The post on the first page of this thread shows a location (TP1706) near the debug port to tap 1.8v and connect it to the FT230X's VCCIO. However, according to the FT232R's datasheet, you should use the same source as VCC in order to drive VCCIO, i.e. if you use the USB port's 5V as a source for VCC, you need to use the source for VCCIO too (not TP1706). Normally, one would just use an LDO voltage regulator like the LM1117 to get a stable 1.8V. Unfortunately, none of the electronics stores around here have that component in stock, and I wasn't going to pay mouser $20 for a part that costs 50 cents! So what I did was I dropped the voltage to an acceptable level using resistors. I started with 5V, used 200 ohms for R1, 120 ohms for R2, and ran a wire to VCCIO from between the two resistors, which gave me app. 1.88V. Perfect. It's ugly - but it works.

I use Arch linux on my main desktop PC. As far as software goes, I ended up using a combination of the linux side as well as on my virtualbox win10 guest. Win10 downloaded and installed the correct drivers for the FT232R automatically, so it wasn't necessary to manually download and install the drivers mentioned in grant2's first post. I used win10 version of putty for communication.

What I suggest to anyone reading this and attempting the serial port JB, is to start with grant2's post up until you get to the bootm 0xe41000 part. Then use coplate's post for guidance to get through the next phase: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=237 and then go back to grant2's post until you get to the KUAL installation part. If your kindle is at 5.9.2, those instructions will no longer work for installing KUAL.

The hardware part went well, and the jailbreak installed as expected, but what should have been the "easy" part (installing KUAL and other software post-JB) gave me the most trouble. I read a lot of posts after, thought that maybe somehow the jailbreak got taken out (though I did set the kindle to airplane mode). Nothing I tried worked. I was just about to re-open the kindle and reconnect to the serial port, when I tried the G090G1 bin which is posted here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=64. Much to my surprise the "Update Your Kindle" option became available! I executed that routine, which updated then rebooted, and voila...KUAL booklet was finally installed!

From thereon in it was smooth sailing. Before running "UYK", I saw that the G090G1 bin file had been renamed with a long string of hex (a key of some sort to get the kindle to accept the update?) before I ran the UYK. Interesting.

One last thing. Make sure you have excellent light and a magnifying glass to solder wires to the debug port's pads. They are extremely small. Don't apply the iron's tip to them directly unless you're using a very low powered iron. Tin your wires first, then heat the wire. Applying a little flux can be helpful too.

12-11-2017, 02:56 PM	#293
svg1234 Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2017 Device: Kindle PW3	Joined mobileread yesterday mainly to express thanks to those who post on this forum and share valuable information. Special thanks to Grant2, knc1, NiLuJe, and Coplate. Amazing how much one can learn in just a couple of days of reading. I also thought I should write a post to hopefully provide some help to those who might attempt this procedure. I bought a Kindle PW3 last year. Hadn't used it much, but was aware that it could be jailbroken. Unfortunately, before doing enough research. I allowed it to update to 5.9.2 (32507...). As far as I have read, there is no software JB for that rev at this time (at least not in the public domain). When I saw this thread and realized that I could do it via the serial debug port, I knew I had to go for it. I've done a lot of, um, "modding" of h/w and s/w over the years. I live in Canada and it's not easy to get parts/components locally. Availability is poor and if you do find parts, they are usually far more expensive than they should be (mostly due to insane shipping costs). We do the best we can given the reality of the situation. I could not easily or inexpensively get a MicroFTX or Micro1v8 board. But I was able to find this circuit board: https://www.electronicgeek.ca/collec...-port-montreal It's based on the FT232R. Without knowing anything about arduion, or this tiny circuit board, I figured I'd be able to get it to work somehow for this application as long as it had a USB to serial chip on it. This board has "yp-05" stamped on the back. Turns out this circuit is quite popular and sold on ebay and many other online stores. It also turns out that the FTDI chip is a fake! (Confirmed by serial number). Oh well. It didn't give me any trouble, but it's probably better to try and get the real thing if you can. That circuit (by default) outputs 5v or 3.3v (jumper selectable). From what I had read, the kindle uses 1.8v. I probably could have just gone ahead and used 3.3V, but I didn't want to take the chance of frying my kindle. The post on the first page of this thread shows a location (TP1706) near the debug port to tap 1.8v and connect it to the FT230X's VCCIO. However, according to the FT232R's datasheet, you should use the same source as VCC in order to drive VCCIO, i.e. if you use the USB port's 5V as a source for VCC, you need to use the source for VCCIO too (not TP1706). Normally, one would just use an LDO voltage regulator like the LM1117 to get a stable 1.8V. Unfortunately, none of the electronics stores around here have that component in stock, and I wasn't going to pay mouser $20 for a part that costs 50 cents! So what I did was I dropped the voltage to an acceptable level using resistors. I started with 5V, used 200 ohms for R1, 120 ohms for R2, and ran a wire to VCCIO from between the two resistors, which gave me app. 1.88V. Perfect. It's ugly - but it works. I use Arch linux on my main desktop PC. As far as software goes, I ended up using a combination of the linux side as well as on my virtualbox win10 guest. Win10 downloaded and installed the correct drivers for the FT232R automatically, so it wasn't necessary to manually download and install the drivers mentioned in grant2's first post. I used win10 version of putty for communication. What I suggest to anyone reading this and attempting the serial port JB, is to start with grant2's post up until you get to the bootm 0xe41000 part. Then use coplate's post for guidance to get through the next phase: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=237 and then go back to grant2's post until you get to the KUAL installation part. If your kindle is at 5.9.2, those instructions will no longer work for installing KUAL. The hardware part went well, and the jailbreak installed as expected, but what should have been the "easy" part (installing KUAL and other software post-JB) gave me the most trouble. I read a lot of posts after, thought that maybe somehow the jailbreak got taken out (though I did set the kindle to airplane mode). Nothing I tried worked. I was just about to re-open the kindle and reconnect to the serial port, when I tried the G090G1 bin which is posted here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...3&postcount=64. Much to my surprise the "Update Your Kindle" option became available! I executed that routine, which updated then rebooted, and voila...KUAL booklet was finally installed! From thereon in it was smooth sailing. Before running "UYK", I saw that the G090G1 bin file had been renamed with a long string of hex (a key of some sort to get the kindle to accept the update?) before I ran the UYK. Interesting. One last thing. Make sure you have excellent light and a magnifying glass to solder wires to the debug port's pads. They are extremely small. Don't apply the iron's tip to them directly unless you're using a very low powered iron. Tin your wires first, then heat the wire. Applying a little flux can be helpful too. Last edited by svg1234; 12-11-2017 at 03:21 PM.