How to debricking My kindel 3.

gzm001 · 06-26-2012, 09:33 PM

My K3 was be hacked one year ago, everything was well.
But, several days ago, It was self-reboot, and
self-reboot,like a madman. So I open the back cover, and move the
battery, waiting for 30 seconds, reinstall the battery...then
the K3 was Bricked : screen freeze on the Tree picture, progress bar has
be a little. Try connected to WINXP by USB, the WINXP show unknown device "SE Blank ringo" .
now it is bricked and screen freeze like above , whether I reboot or charge to yellow LED goes out ...

so, What can i do? Can I repair it by Usb line ? Please help ...

Thanks in advance, and sorry by my poor English...

knc1 · 06-26-2012, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gzm001

My K3 was be hacked one year ago, everything was well.
But, several days ago, It was self-reboot, and
self-reboot,like a madman. So I open the back cover, and move the
battery, waiting for 30 seconds, reinstall the battery...then
the K3 was Bricked : screen freeze on the Tree picture, progress bar has
be a little. Try connected to WINXP by USB, the WINXP show unknown device "SE Blank ringo" .
now it is bricked and screen freeze like above , whether I reboot or charge to yellow LED goes out ...

so, What can i do? Can I repair it by Usb line ? Please help ...

Thanks in advance, and sorry by my poor English...

Short answer: Yes, we just did that for a K3 recently.

The "SE Blank ringo" device is the Kindle in "Recovery Mode" (where you want to be).

Long answer:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=181143

A five page thread.
It will be hard to follow until a summary of the steps that actually lead to recovering the K3 is written up.

geekmaster · 06-27-2012, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by knc1

Short answer: Yes, we just did that for a K3 recently.

The "SE Blank ringo" device is the Kindle in "Recovery Mode" (where you want to be).

Long answer:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=181143

A five page thread.
It will be hard to follow until a summary of the steps that actually lead to recovering the K3 is written up.

Somebody got K3 USB recovery figured out? That is news to me. I will go read that thread when I have time. If so, excellent news!

hawhill · 06-27-2012, 06:50 AM

Nah, we're not nearly there yet. And if the device is bricked down completely (I doubt so, but it's very well possible), there is no fix. Otherwise, the referenced thread has its value for referring to a few pitfalls for serial recovery.

For the OP: Recovery via serial interface is still the only known method. You need a 1.8V ttl level serial interface, and some basic knowledge about using a serial console. Plus, there is no guarantee it will work since it still needs a tiny bit of non-broken data on the flash drive (Uboot plus the kernel including initramfs).

For fellow developers interested in creating a USB recovery path: I'm planning to open a new thread for digging deeper into the USB recovery thing. I've played a bit with it lately, and the sources of ATK knc1 referenced in the other thread were helpful (although awful to read, very clearly written by drunk monkeys, reviewed by a sleeping panda). There is a "ROM kernel" (Freescale name), and ATK pushes a "RAM kernel" for accessing the different flash types. The latter is not fit for the Kindle, and the idea is to push uboot and/or a linux kernel instead. It's *not* easy to get there. However, luckily the engineers that built the Kindle PCB didn't mess it up - which is easy to do. The thing is the crossbar switch in the SoC, which needs to be correctly initialized to toggle the right pins. However, they didn't went far from the initial default, AFAICS. Currently I'm really missing a simple test point toggled by a GPIO, preferably, to have a simple test for uploading and running my own code in USB ROM kernel (i.e. SE Ringo) mode. Again: ATK will *not* work as it is for writing/reading data. The RAM kernel it is equipped with is designed for their own evaluation boards - different enough compared with the Kindle.

knc1 · 06-27-2012, 07:57 AM

There is a place in the index system for this information (now) see:
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/K3_Index#Recovery

Which currently only indexes Yifanlu's post about putting the K3 in diagnostics mode.
A post made back in Feb. 2011, to which no one has yet replied.

Perhaps someone has time to investigate K3 Diag Mode further? We do know a bit more about Diag Mode on other models than we did back then.

geekmaster · 06-27-2012, 02:40 PM

[QUOTE=hawhill;2128834... Currently I'm really missing a simple test point toggled by a GPIO, preferably, to have a simple test for uploading and running my own code in USB ROM kernel (i.e. SE Ringo) mode. Again: ATK will *not* work as it is for writing/reading data. The RAM kernel it is equipped with is designed for their own evaluation boards - different enough compared with the Kindle.[/QUOTE]What I did when developing a custom uboot for MfgTool was to have it print to the serial port, so I could see the results while I poked around in it.

In my case, my K4 somehow corrupted itself, writing garbage on all the idme vars (including Serial number, PCB serial, etc.). Without PCBSN it did not know how to initialize RAM and just displayed an error message to serial output and halted. My custom code forced (and wrote) all the idme vars to values from a backup copy (inside a diags XML output dump). So the custom MfgTool profiles began life debricking my SEVERELY bricked K4.

Instead of toggling a GPIO you could test your code with serial output. Although, if we can find a few GPIO pins we can add a bit-bashed SD-CARD interface.

06-26-2012, 09:33 PM	#1
gzm001 Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: kindel 3	How to debricking My kindel 3. My K3 was be hacked one year ago, everything was well. But, several days ago, It was self-reboot, and self-reboot,like a madman. So I open the back cover, and move the battery, waiting for 30 seconds, reinstall the battery...then the K3 was Bricked : screen freeze on the Tree picture, progress bar has be a little. Try connected to WINXP by USB, the WINXP show unknown device "SE Blank ringo" . now it is bricked and screen freeze like above , whether I reboot or charge to yellow LED goes out ... so, What can i do? Can I repair it by Usb line ? Please help ... Thanks in advance, and sorry by my poor English... Last edited by gzm001; 06-26-2012 at 09:40 PM.

06-27-2012, 07:57 AM	#5
knc1 Going Viral Posts: 17,212 Karma: 18210809 Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Central Texas Device: No K1, PW2, KV, KOA	K3 Rescue and Recovery There is a place in the index system for this information (now) see: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/K3_Index#Recovery Which currently only indexes Yifanlu's post about putting the K3 in diagnostics mode. A post made back in Feb. 2011, to which no one has yet replied. Perhaps someone has time to investigate K3 Diag Mode further? We do know a bit more about Diag Mode on other models than we did back then. Last edited by knc1; 06-27-2012 at 08:00 AM.

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06-27-2012, 06:50 AM	#4
hawhill Wizard Posts: 1,379 Karma: 2155307 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Goettingen, Germany Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Kobo Mini	Nah, we're not nearly there yet. And if the device is bricked down completely (I doubt so, but it's very well possible), there is no fix. Otherwise, the referenced thread has its value for referring to a few pitfalls for serial recovery. For the OP: Recovery via serial interface is still the only known method. You need a 1.8V ttl level serial interface, and some basic knowledge about using a serial console. Plus, there is no guarantee it will work since it still needs a tiny bit of non-broken data on the flash drive (Uboot plus the kernel including initramfs). For fellow developers interested in creating a USB recovery path: I'm planning to open a new thread for digging deeper into the USB recovery thing. I've played a bit with it lately, and the sources of ATK knc1 referenced in the other thread were helpful (although awful to read, very clearly written by drunk monkeys, reviewed by a sleeping panda). There is a "ROM kernel" (Freescale name), and ATK pushes a "RAM kernel" for accessing the different flash types. The latter is not fit for the Kindle, and the idea is to push uboot and/or a linux kernel instead. It's not easy to get there. However, luckily the engineers that built the Kindle PCB didn't mess it up - which is easy to do. The thing is the crossbar switch in the SoC, which needs to be correctly initialized to toggle the right pins. However, they didn't went far from the initial default, AFAICS. Currently I'm really missing a simple test point toggled by a GPIO, preferably, to have a simple test for uploading and running my own code in USB ROM kernel (i.e. SE Ringo) mode. Again: ATK will not work as it is for writing/reading data. The RAM kernel it is equipped with is designed for their own evaluation boards - different enough compared with the Kindle.

06-27-2012, 02:40 PM	#6
geekmaster Carpe diem, c'est la vie. Posts: 6,433 Karma: 10773668 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Multiverse 6627A Device: K1 to PW3	[QUOTE=hawhill;2128834... Currently I'm really missing a simple test point toggled by a GPIO, preferably, to have a simple test for uploading and running my own code in USB ROM kernel (i.e. SE Ringo) mode. Again: ATK will not work as it is for writing/reading data. The RAM kernel it is equipped with is designed for their own evaluation boards - different enough compared with the Kindle.[/QUOTE]What I did when developing a custom uboot for MfgTool was to have it print to the serial port, so I could see the results while I poked around in it. In my case, my K4 somehow corrupted itself, writing garbage on all the idme vars (including Serial number, PCB serial, etc.). Without PCBSN it did not know how to initialize RAM and just displayed an error message to serial output and halted. My custom code forced (and wrote) all the idme vars to values from a backup copy (inside a diags XML output dump). So the custom MfgTool profiles began life debricking my SEVERELY bricked K4. Instead of toggling a GPIO you could test your code with serial output. Although, if we can find a few GPIO pins we can add a bit-bashed SD-CARD interface.