Onyx BOOX Go 6 - rebooting to EDL from fastboot or recovery?

[knuxify]

Hi,

I've been messing around with the firmware on my Onyx Go 6. I reflashed the boot partition with a custom image, but this caused the device to start rebooting into fastboot mode. I can't do "fastboot flash boot boot_a.bin" to reflash the original image (I have a full dump of all partitions from EDL), since I get "FAILED (remote: 'unknown command')" (I read somewhere that they removed all fastboot commands in some firmware version?); I can't do "adb reboot edl" since I can't boot into Android. I tried switching the active slot to slot B (you can do it in the "fastboot" mode in the recovery), but this caused the device to go into a bootloop where on each boot it would go into crashdump mode (I looked into the memory dump and it seems that the kernel panics for some reason).

So, my questions are as follows:

* Is there any way to reboot into EDL from either fastboot or the recovery? Preferably without having to build an EDL cable (would have to order the parts...) or taking apart the device (unless someone has a guide for that - I've been considering taking it apart to try to get UART access, since it will be useful for my future shenanigans - I hear there are some EDL test points there as well?)
* While we're at it - is there any way to get a bootloader with a more useful fastboot mode running? Has anyone tried downgrading it to an older version? How about the new beta 4.0 firmware?

[Renate]

Of course I have a magnetic reed switch in my Go6 to get to EDL.
But I just soldered up an EDL cable with a switch salvaged off a kitchen timer.
I think that the cable was $1.50, complete junk, unshielded.
So, yeah, EDL cables work.

Usually it's better if you have a custom recovery in there before you brick your device.

The EDL test points and the UART are documented here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...35#post4458335
You might want to read the whole thread.

The v4 for the Go6 is still in beta, but you can get that here:

Model:  Go6 (English)
Finger: Onyx/Go6/Go6:11/2025-02-11_23-36_v4.0-beta4_a390c414ef/48880:user/release-keys
Link:   http://firmware-us.boox.com/cb6afbde5365d8fc8ab86ab94490aad4/update.upx
Size:   1,752,091,374
MD5:    cb6afbde5365d8fc8ab86ab94490aad4

[knuxify]

Thanks for the reply. Guess I should invest in an EDL cable after all

Do you perhaps have a firmware link for version 3.5.4 (and maybe 3.5.3)?

[Renate]

The Chinese Poke6 just went to v4 (non beta).
Do you read Chinese well enough?

Model:  Poke6 (Chinese)
Finger: Onyx/Poke6/Poke6:11/2025-03-09_12-50_v4.0-rel_5cf49da030/49131:user/release-keys
Link:   http://firmware.boox.com/c04ee94d5bddc60a896ba5db843dbde1/update.upx
Size:   1,727,958,508
MD5:    c04ee94d5bddc60a896ba5db843dbde1