How to brick my Kindle Touch

[MaPePeR]

Hi,

I'm very interested in how to brick my Kindle Touch.

What do i need to do to "brick" it?
Can i do anything to brick it forever?

Greetings

I hope this thread did go in the right topic and is not a duplicate.

[hostar]

OK, I don't know if you have understand this, but "bricking" is bad thing.
Bricked Kindle means unusable for reading books or sometimes unusable for anything.
You can brick it mostly accidentally when trying something untested or when just experimenting with something new. Also in Touch case, there was cases of "self bricking", when /var /local/ went full by itself (probably some firmware bug).

So I believe you could find way how to brick Kindle forever, but you don't want definitely do it.

[thomass]

Originally Posted by MaPePeR

I'm very interested in how to brick my Kindle Touch.

Are you planning to create a virus for Kindle?

Wow, the first virus of the Kindle History!

Maybe, I can...

[seaniko7]

Jailbrick ?

btw. 5.1.0 has just came out.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by MaPePeR

Hi,

I'm very interested in how to brick my Kindle Touch.

What do i need to do to "brick" it?
Can i do anything to brick it forever?

Greetings

I hope this thread did go in the right topic and is not a duplicate.

There is no way to turn off USB Downloader mode, so to prevent it from being debricked with MfgTool, you need a hardware solution.

I think that the quickest and easiest way to brick a kindle forever is to cook it in a microwave oven until it releases its "magic smoke".

I hope that you are doing this to your own kindle, rather that one belonging to somebody you want to seriously irritate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(electronics)

EDIT: I think that this thread was created 10 days late.

UPDATE: Be aware, though, that this procedure may void the warranty on your kindle.

[MaPePeR]

Originally Posted by hostar

OK, I don't know if you have understand this, but "bricking" is bad thing.
Bricked Kindle means unusable for reading books or sometimes unusable for anything.

Who said i want to do that?

You can brick it mostly accidentally when trying something untested or when just experimenting with something new. Also in Touch case, there was cases of "self bricking", when /var /local/ went full by itself (probably some firmware bug).

Can you be more precise?
Can i brick it by just executing a Shell script?
Or reading the wrong book?
Opening the wrong web page?
Or do i need to do things like flashing custom kernels?

So I believe you could find way how to brick Kindle forever, but you don't want definitely do it.

Right

Originally Posted by geekmaster

There is no way to turn off USB Downloader mode, so to prevent it from being debricked with MfgTool, you need a hardware solution.

That sounds good

I think that the quickest and easiest way to brick a kindle forever is to cook it in a microwave oven until it releases its "magic smoke".

Thats a thing you can do with every device, so its a boring way to brick it.

My motivation in asking this:
I want to be as free as possible and so i want not do things that will brick it, instead of doing only things, that will not brick it.
But therefor i need to know, what i need to do to brick it.

[TCCPhreak]

Originally Posted by MaPePeR

My motivation in asking this:
I want to be as free as possible and so i want not do things that will brick it, instead of doing only things, that will not brick it.
But therefor i need to know, what i need to do to brick it.

English is not your native language, is it? Not that I'm in a position to judge..

From what I read, I guess you want to know the things that can seriously damage/brick your kindle - so you know what to avoid doing.

The "good" news is that problems in scripts and careless messing over SSH can really screw up necessary files or even filesystems. With a single wrong dd-command you can erase both kernels and all data.

I've never heard of "dangerous" webpages but if the browser has security issues, they could be a problem. I'm thinking executed scripts of funny letters in download filenames.

"Dangerous" books (or PDFs) may be fun too, but again I think that the reader is too capsuled from the rest of the system to allow such damage.

The "bad" news is that - like geekmaster said - the freescale mx50-line has a USB-Downloader mode in hardware so that even with everything else lost, you can still put the Kindle into that mode and then use custom mfgtool-profiles to access the kindle, load a flashing tool and recover things.

I'm at that point currently, myself: None of the kernels load and even fastboot (which normally is safe as hell) doesn't work.
This is also a situation in which the serial port could allow you to recover the system in ways impossible using other means.

A complete bricking without hardware failure is seen as impossible at the moment. Still, it is possible to put the Kindle into a configuration that needs a lot of work to recover from (in case of the custom flash-configuration also a lot of reading freescale documentation and trying things).

Regards,

TCC

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by TCCPhreak

...
I'm at that point currently, myself: None of the kernels load and even fastboot (which normally is safe as hell) doesn't work.
This is also a situation in which the serial port could allow you to recover the system in ways impossible using other means.

The fastboot mode is supported by bist (built-in self-test) u-boot (bootloader firmware). If you damage or erase bist u-boot in the mmc flash device, you cannot go into fastboot mode by normal methods (MfgTool or diags menu).

It would be possible to build a custom u-boot image and MfgTool profile, but the larger bist u-boot requires a multi-stage load profile, because it will not fit into the small RAM memory in the iMX50 SoC (system on chip).

Currently, the only "easy" way to flash the mmc in the case of no diags or fastboot, is by using the serial port and loading a firmware image using YMODEM serial protocol.

I hope *somebody* will provide us a working MfgTool profile and images to get into fastboot mode and/or directly flash an image to a completely erased mmc flash chip. Perhaps someday I will have time to study that again...

[MaPePeR]

Originally Posted by TCCPhreak

English is not your native language, is it? Not that I'm in a position to judge..

Right!

From what I read, I guess you want to know the things that can seriously damage/brick your kindle - so you know what to avoid doing.

Again Right!

The "good" news is that problems in scripts and careless messing over SSH can really screw up necessary files or even filesystems. With a single wrong dd-command you can erase both kernels and all data.

So you can give some rules, what not to do?

I've never heard of "dangerous" webpages but if the browser has security issues, they could be a problem. I'm thinking executed scripts of funny letters in download filenames.

I thought about the kindle-js-api-calls.

The "bad" news is that - like geekmaster said - the freescale mx50-line has a USB-Downloader mode in hardware so that even with everything else lost, you can still put the Kindle into that mode and then use custom mfgtool-profiles to access the kindle, load a flashing tool and recover things.

Without soldering?

I'm at that point currently, myself: None of the kernels load and even fastboot (which normally is safe as hell) doesn't work.
This is also a situation in which the serial port could allow you to recover the system in ways impossible using other means.

For me a brick is acceptable till the point, that i need to - for example: open up the device cover and connect to mysterious serial ports in order to regain control over my device.

In which boundaries do i need to keep my developments, when i want to avoid situation like yours?

Greetings

[knc1]

Originally Posted by MaPePeR

My motivation in asking this:
I want to be as free as possible and so i want not do things that will brick it, instead of doing only things, that will not brick it.
But therefor i need to know, what i need to do to brick it.

Like others have written, there seems to be a bit of a lanuage problem here.

I think your first sentence above is probably what you are most interested in.
Those things which are least likely to give you trouble.

A "shopping guide" to Kindle modifications on this forum:

Kindle models have a lot of technical differences, pick from threads that specifically mention your model.

Don't be in a hurry to try something as soon as it is posted. Give the other members a chance to try it out first. There may be problems found and fixed during the course of the discussion thread's lifetime.

When the discussion thread seems to show a completeness that you like; then always check the lead post of the thread.
Most thread authors here keep the "best and most recent" versions listed in the first post.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else basic to a "forum shopping guide". Perhaps someone else can extend this list of "best practices".

- - - -

Your last sentence has no simple answer, it is like asking how to stub your toe. The world is full of ways to stub your toe or brick your Kindle.

[MaPePeR]

Originally Posted by knc1

Your last sentence has no simple answer, it is like asking how to stub your toe. The world is full of ways to stub your toe or brick your Kindle.

Damn. That exactly is my question.

So you cant give a simple list of "what happened before"?

I would find it very nice to have such a list, to take counter-measures before bad things happen.

[MaPePeR]

Sorry for being annoying.

Originally Posted by geekmaster

This tinysh script does not do anything that CAN brick your device.

That makes me feel like there IS an answer to my question.
But why dont you want to give it?

[Poetcop]

There is a legitimate question here: what kinds of activities have the potential to damage fastboot capability? You might call it the "superbrick". My impression is superbricking is really quite difficult: you'd have to have some kind of runaway process overwriting the mmc flash chip (could that happen by writing to the normal file system, eg with a dd?). If TCCPhreak knows what happened with their Kindle, that would be interesting to know.

But of the dozens of people who've reported their bricking problems on this forum, all but a handful of them have been able to use the fastboot method combined with a clean disk image (or some even easier method), to get it back, and it is now a relatively straightforward, well documented procedure. The only thing that's risk free is to not jailbreak your Kindle (since even if it breaks on its own you can send it back) or use any other mods, but I think the risk of playing around with scripts at the moment is remarkably low. Just make a backup of all the partitions before you start.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by MaPePeR

Sorry for being annoying.


That makes me feel like there IS an answer to my question.
But why dont you want to give it?

WTF???

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

WTF???

Why don't we just tell MaPePeR that it is our intent to keep the answer to his question secret forever?