Manually copy full filesystem to Kindle 3?

joshy216 · 01-19-2019, 04:24 PM

So you know how you've all read a thousand posts that start with "I used to have a Kindle 3 and......sat in a drawer for a long time.....tried to start it up again.....only shows the empty battery screen.....tried soft reset......had to do a hard reset.....etc..."?

Just substitute one of those. For the first part of this post. You've heard it all before.

Now for the (somewhat) novel stuff--I've done, so far as I can tell, about ten thousand different troubleshooting and recovery things to try to get this darn thing working again. Some of my greatest hits:

called customer support -- no dice
replaced the battery and charged it -- nope
ALL the resets -- did nothing
shorted across the reset terminals on the PCB for the device -- bupkes
put .bin files GALORE in the root directory in recovery mode and restarted -- NO

It will go to recovery mode. When I exit recovery mode it starts to restart, I get the progress bar, and then before it gets halfway full it goes back to the empty battery screen.

I've been trying to figure out how to jailbreak the thing to see if I can get SOME use out of it (I don't have the necessary TTL cable for any of those methods), and the non-serial options involve modifying the existing filesystem. But here's the thing: it doesn't seem to have a filesystem. When I open the device to view files when it's connected to my computer in recovery mode, the drive is empty.

I've checked for hidden files and even tried looking at the partitions. There's one visible partition that is 3GB, and that's it. And it's empty. (Well there's your problem, you might be saying...)

What I'm trying to figure out is if I can get ahold of a disk image or something of ALL of the files that would normally be on that primary partition and copy it over manually. Does that exist? Is it even possible? Would it even work?

Or did I miss something else?

Thank you for any insight you may have.

NiLuJe · 01-19-2019, 04:34 PM

The "empty USBMS" export is an expected behavior in *some* circumstances.

I honestly don't recall *all* the details, but it's not necessarily indicative of any real failure. What I do seem to recall is that trying to put stuff on it in this state will certainly be useless

.

(I *think* that's a vanilla feature of the old mass-storage Linux USB gadget, so, checking its source might yield some info, but probably won't really help you fix it

).

joshy216 · 01-19-2019, 04:36 PM

Huh. Ok. Any thoughts on why it would repeatedly go back to the Empty Battery screen, despite brand new battery and multiple resets (of varying hardness...)?

NiLuJe · 01-19-2019, 04:41 PM

I think it's actually genuinely querying the battery status in order to decide whether to punt you to that screen or not, so, might be an HW issue slightly "higher" up the chain?

JSWolf · 01-19-2019, 04:49 PM

Did you try to charge the battery that was in it before you replaced the battery?

joshy216 · 01-19-2019, 04:55 PM

I did. Always got the same thing, which I (foolishly, apparently) assumed was because the battery was bad.

knc1 · 01-19-2019, 08:11 PM

Did you ever dump the system messages log, read it, and do you recall the details that lead to the "Empty Battery" screen(s)?

Note: What you describe is a normal and common description of the death of a K3.
Note2: You are not seeing the system file tree, only that tiny portion exported of USB.
Note3: Yes, there are complete K3 system image files (not from Amazon, only here, we are the only place that ever created them). So follow the original K3 de-bricking posts until you find the link to the posted complete image files.
Note4: The person who was maintaining the image archive posting died of cancer this past fall, so the image archive may have been shut down by his heirs.

01-19-2019, 04:24 PM	#1
joshy216 Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2019 Device: Kindle 3	Manually copy full filesystem to Kindle 3? So you know how you've all read a thousand posts that start with "I used to have a Kindle 3 and......sat in a drawer for a long time.....tried to start it up again.....only shows the empty battery screen.....tried soft reset......had to do a hard reset.....etc..."? Just substitute one of those. For the first part of this post. You've heard it all before. Now for the (somewhat) novel stuff--I've done, so far as I can tell, about ten thousand different troubleshooting and recovery things to try to get this darn thing working again. Some of my greatest hits: called customer support -- no dice replaced the battery and charged it -- nope ALL the resets -- did nothing shorted across the reset terminals on the PCB for the device -- bupkes put .bin files GALORE in the root directory in recovery mode and restarted -- NO It will go to recovery mode. When I exit recovery mode it starts to restart, I get the progress bar, and then before it gets halfway full it goes back to the empty battery screen. I've been trying to figure out how to jailbreak the thing to see if I can get SOME use out of it (I don't have the necessary TTL cable for any of those methods), and the non-serial options involve modifying the existing filesystem. But here's the thing: it doesn't seem to have a filesystem. When I open the device to view files when it's connected to my computer in recovery mode, the drive is empty. I've checked for hidden files and even tried looking at the partitions. There's one visible partition that is 3GB, and that's it. And it's empty. (Well there's your problem, you might be saying...) What I'm trying to figure out is if I can get ahold of a disk image or something of ALL of the files that would normally be on that primary partition and copy it over manually. Does that exist? Is it even possible? Would it even work? Or did I miss something else? Thank you for any insight you may have.

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01-19-2019, 04:34 PM	#2
NiLuJe BLAM! Posts: 13,506 Karma: 26047202 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Paris, France Device: Kindle 2i, 3g, 4, 5w, PW, PW2, PW5; Kobo H2O, Forma, Elipsa, Sage, C2E	The "empty USBMS" export is an expected behavior in some circumstances. I honestly don't recall all the details, but it's not necessarily indicative of any real failure. What I do seem to recall is that trying to put stuff on it in this state will certainly be useless . (I think that's a vanilla feature of the old mass-storage Linux USB gadget, so, checking its source might yield some info, but probably won't really help you fix it ).

01-19-2019, 04:36 PM	#3
joshy216 Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2019 Device: Kindle 3	Huh. Ok. Any thoughts on why it would repeatedly go back to the Empty Battery screen, despite brand new battery and multiple resets (of varying hardness...)?

01-19-2019, 04:41 PM	#4
NiLuJe BLAM! Posts: 13,506 Karma: 26047202 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Paris, France Device: Kindle 2i, 3g, 4, 5w, PW, PW2, PW5; Kobo H2O, Forma, Elipsa, Sage, C2E	I think it's actually genuinely querying the battery status in order to decide whether to punt you to that screen or not, so, might be an HW issue slightly "higher" up the chain?

01-19-2019, 04:49 PM	#5
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,740 Karma: 145864619 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Did you try to charge the battery that was in it before you replaced the battery?

01-19-2019, 04:55 PM	#6
joshy216 Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2019 Device: Kindle 3	I did. Always got the same thing, which I (foolishly, apparently) assumed was because the battery was bad.

01-19-2019, 08:11 PM	#7
knc1 Going Viral Posts: 17,212 Karma: 18210809 Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Central Texas Device: No K1, PW2, KV, KOA	Did you ever dump the system messages log, read it, and do you recall the details that lead to the "Empty Battery" screen(s)? Note: What you describe is a normal and common description of the death of a K3. Note2: You are not seeing the system file tree, only that tiny portion exported of USB. Note3: Yes, there are complete K3 system image files (not from Amazon, only here, we are the only place that ever created them). So follow the original K3 de-bricking posts until you find the link to the posted complete image files. Note4: The person who was maintaining the image archive posting died of cancer this past fall, so the image archive may have been shut down by his heirs.

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