Kubrick: Live CD to debrick Kindle 3, 4, and Touch

[knc1]

I mentioned the search filter because at this moment, the thread he needs is the last one on the first page of the index.

I.E: About to disappear onto the second page of the index.
I sometimes think people don't realize the forum index has more than one page to it.
(At the moment, it has 138 pages - 137 of which nobody reads.)

And another hint: 5.3.x is between 5.0.x and 5.4.x

[knc1]

As posted in another thread, there where reported problems getting Kubrick to boot on a Win8.1 machine.

Turned out in that case, I had given the poster the wrong directions.
My bad.
But that was an Intel Celeron powered machine.

At the same time (+/- a day) I received a new little box that is (soon: was) running Win8.1 -

My box is running one of the Intel Z37xxx SoC devices.
The Z35xxx and Z37xxx products where not introduced until after the most recent build of Kubrick.

Also, MS shifted (with Win8.0) to UEFI with GPT disk labels **only** - no legacy DOS disk label support.
That trend (should) be continuing with Win9 and Win10.
(Although I am the last person to know about anything MS.)

The Z35 and Z37 products have another quirk that makes support difficult -
Although 64-bit CPUs, they boot in 32-bit and use 32-bit UEFI boot loaders.
Which makes things a bit more tricky when booting a 64-bit OS.
(Which can be done, my Win8.1 is a 64-bit OS.)

Intel info at: http://ark.intel.com/products/80274/...up-to-1_83-GHz

Intel has been pushing Z35/Z37 support into the Linux kernel (starting with v-3.16), but so far the oldest I have tested and gotten to boot and run on my box is this one:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/i38...neric/download
(The flavor used by Ubuntu 15.04-beta.)

I intend to continue with my testing (as part of replacing the Win8.1 install on my new box) and will see if I can come up with a UEFI support, newer Kernel for Kubrick.

Note: The posted Kubrick has been reported to boot on Mac devices (EFI boot, but with legacy support as far as I know).

Edit:
I will also be trying out the latest (4.2.0) generic kernel.
That may 'fix' Kubric for the next few years.

[xs400]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Na, I didn't think that.

Anyway, it was a holiday weekend in the US.




Good job.

Your post is just the kind of encouragement that usually leads me to find the way. Just now trying your way didn't work for me, but it certainly is worth trying.

Everything seemed great and I loaded the jailbreak and some of the hacks I wanted; loaded a few books and then...

- It froze.
- Kept charging it and it woke up "fully" and listed the books, and died again after a short while.
- Left it charging for a few days, and this seems to have woken it up "fully" again. I've left it on the charger.

I am not sure if it is the battery, it reads 4.1V - the orange light comes on when I plug the charger in, but then goes off after a few seconds.

I am wondering how I can be sure it is just the battery. I can charge the battery on an external charger - I did this once, but it did not seem to help. (The charger is smart and it stopped charging the battery once it sensed it was charged). After I put the battery back in, it did not change anything.

[Since I am in India, I don't want to replace the battery and then find out that the battery was not the problem]


I am wondering if I can temporarily use a 4-terminal Li ion phone battery to check.

Can one of the gurus on this forum tell me if the Kindle checks to see if there is an actual Amazon Kindle3 battery? Or will any 4-terminal battery work?

TIA.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by xs400

Everything seemed great and I loaded the jailbreak and some of the hacks I wanted; loaded a few books and then...

- It froze.
- Kept charging it and it woke up "fully" and listed the books, and died again after a short while.
- Left it charging for a few days, and this seems to have woken it up "fully" again. I've left it on the charger.

I am not sure if it is the battery, it reads 4.1V - the orange light comes on when I plug the charger in, but then goes off after a few seconds.

I am wondering how I can be sure it is just the battery. I can charge the battery on an external charger - I did this once, but it did not seem to help. (The charger is smart and it stopped charging the battery once it sensed it was charged). After I put the battery back in, it did not change anything.

[Since I am in India, I don't want to replace the battery and then find out that the battery was not the problem]


I am wondering if I can temporarily use a 4-terminal Li ion phone battery to check.

Can one of the gurus on this forum tell me if the Kindle checks to see if there is an actual Amazon Kindle3 battery? Or will any 4-terminal battery work?

TIA.

You did not mention what model of Kindle.
Maybe they only sell/sold one model in India, but we don't know what that one was.

Help yourself, and us by checking the first four (or six) characters of the device's serial number against this table:
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Serial_Numbers

Once you do that, then we can answer your "any battery" question.

= = = =

The reason for leaving it on a wall charger for days or weeks is to allow time for it to complete things that take a very long run time.
(indexing a bunch of new books, recovering a bad file system etc.)

The battery, even brand new, in the best of condition, fully charged will only run a Kindle for three to four hours. In normal use, the Kindle is powered down in-between page turns.
Hence the need for external power.

= = = =

Start by removing the books you added.
The indexer can get hung up on a 'bad' formated book.

Plug it in to a wall charger, wait a day or two or three -

Report back here.

[Robotech_Master]

I have a Kindle Touch that's not so much bricked as it is unable to install firmware updates. So I'm going to try Kubrick and see if that helps.

I downloaded 3.6, burned it to a CD, attempted to boot my desktop with it...got the "unable to find Java" error. Googled it, found from up-thread that most likely meant the distro was not compatible with that particular CD-ROM drive (a Samsung SE-506 Blu-ray BD-ROM drive). Really, if the original compiler of the distro is still around in this thread, you might consider updating the script to include a more helpful error message.

You know, instead of just saying it couldn't find the Java-whatsit, have it say something like, "This probably means your CD-ROM drive is not compatible with this distro. Please try booting from another CD-ROM drive. If you don't have one, you might consider trying booting it from a USB flash drive instead." I never would have figured that out without my mad Google skillz.

I tried booting it on my old MSi laptop and it started up just fine with the CD-ROM drive there. Right now, I'm waiting for my Kindle to charge up before going any further, since it said it needs to be fully-charged first.

[Robotech_Master]

And as a quick PS: wow! It worked! I had been completely unable to update the firmware on this Touch. Amazon's tech support gave up and gave me $20 to spend on a new Kindle. But once I actually got it to run, my Kindle was reset within 20 minutes and suddenly both firmware updates applied with ease!

Color me a satisfied customer. I'll be posting a TeleRead blog entry about this before too very long.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

- - - -
I tried booting it on my old MSi laptop and it started up just fine with the CD-ROM drive there. Right now, I'm waiting for my Kindle to charge up before going any further, since it said it needs to be fully-charged first.

The author **was** a student when he was active here.
But he completed his work on a Phd. in computer science.

Meaning he lost all of that good "hobby time" available to a student and had to join the 'real world'.
Not likely he will be back here.

- - - -

Since Kubrick was built, and configured at the time to support the greatest range of PC devices, there have been processors and other hardware released that it does not stand a chance of even booting on now.

We may have to host a "prior to 2012" and an "after 2012" version.

I am working on retro-fitting ixtab's application with a newer kernel that stands a chance of working with the "after 2012" low cost systems.
No promises that I can do it though.

- - - -

He, like most developers here, has (or had) his working files posted in a public repository.
I haven't looked (yet) but that should include the sources of Kubrick.
https://bitbucket.org/ixtab/kubrick

Just in case you want to change the message yourself and roll out an updated Kubrick.
You'll find the tests and the message between lines 24..105

[xs400]

Originally Posted by knc1

You did not mention what model of Kindle.
Maybe they only sell/sold one model in India, but we don't know what that one was.

Help yourself, and us by checking the first four (or six) characters of the device's serial number against this table:
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Serial_Numbers

Once you do that, then we can answer your "any battery" question.

= = = =

The reason for leaving it on a wall charger for days or weeks is to allow time for it to complete things that take a very long run time.
(indexing a bunch of new books, recovering a bad file system etc.)

The battery, even brand new, in the best of condition, fully charged will only run a Kindle for three to four hours. In normal use, the Kindle is powered down in-between page turns.
Hence the need for external power.

= = = =

Start by removing the books you added.
The indexer can get hung up on a 'bad' formated book.

Plug it in to a wall charger, wait a day or two or three -

Report back here.

Thanks knc1.

It is a Kindle 3 WiFi (B008).

I've left it on the charger, the light has finally turned green and its still on the charger. Seems to have recovered and is now listing the books. I have not tried reading anything on it (or taken it off the charger).

It would be nice if I could just replace the battery with a readily available Nokia battery (even if it doesn't last as long).

I didn't realize it did things like indexing in the background! That would consume some power.

In a couple of days, I'll take it off the charger and see how long the battery lasts. If I'm lucky, I'll never need to open it up again (except to replace the battery, may be).

[knc1]

The K3 checks, but does nothing about, the battery ID.

It is known that you can run them on even 'normal' (two terminal) external Li-Ion batteries.

There should even be some posts around here by people who did it.
Although hooking up a three pack of "A" size batteries should not require a U-Tube video.

[xs400]

Thanks again, knc1.

Left my Kindle 3 WiFi connected to the charger. Not much change.

I removed the battery and set it aside for about 5 hrs. Put the battery back in connected the charger and it rebooted. Disconnected the charger. Played around with Print Battery - At a level or 100% battery, Voltage was approx 4186 mV and there approx 1535 mA charge. Temperature was around 84 F. Drain varied 40mA to 120mA. Read the Kindle manual for a while. Battery Voltage, charge and percent dropped slightly (to about 98%). Left the Kindle alone. When I came back - white screen,

I'll try your battery pack suggestion and let you know how it goes.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by xs400

Thanks again, knc1.

Left my Kindle 3 WiFi connected to the charger. Not much change.

I removed the battery and set it aside for about 5 hrs. Put the battery back in connected the charger and it rebooted. Disconnected the charger. Played around with Print Battery - At a level or 100% battery, Voltage was approx 4186 mV and there approx 1535 mA charge. Temperature was around 84 F. Drain varied 40mA to 120mA. Read the Kindle manual for a while. Battery Voltage, charge and percent dropped slightly (to about 98%). Left the Kindle alone. When I came back - white screen,

I'll try your battery pack suggestion and let you know how it goes.

That does sound strange.
But trying an external battery pack will at least eliminate or prove that the internal battery is to blame.

[xs400]

@knc1:
Quick question
Is downgrading the firmware from the current 3.4 version to 3.1 as simple as putting the update_kindle_3.1_B008.bin in the root of the USB storage and using the Menu->Settings->Update my Kindle command?

I would like to try and downgrade the firmware to 3.2.1, but I don't see the image listed on Amazon.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by xs400

@knc1:
Quick question
Is downgrading the firmware from the current 3.4 version to 3.1 as simple as putting the update_kindle_3.1_B008.bin in the root of the USB storage and using the Menu->Settings->Update my Kindle command?

I would like to try and downgrade the firmware to 3.2.1, but I don't see the image listed on Amazon.

No.
The updates for series 3 firmware are partial, incremental, updates.
You can only go forward, not backward with the Amazon packages.

Check the "Where do I start" sticky thread, follow through to the information on de-bricking, and from there to the K3 recovery images hosted off-site.
(Or just use Kubrick)

Either way will install a very early version of the firmware for you, then you can use the Amazon packages (in the Amazon prescribed order) to advance to the desired version.

Finding prior to current firmware packages - see the FGA thread.

[zvonchica]

Ixtab, I'd like to thank you for Kubrick - I've just downgraded Kindle 3 from firmware 3.4.2. to 3.4 - it took almost three hours but it was worth it! Thanks a lot for a great tool!

[aRtleuarTsm]

Hi there!!

I don't know if this page is active, but...

I'm new into this kindle world. i'm experimenting all i can and, just for a case i need Kubric, i can't find any working link. If i brink mi kindle, i need an alternative to unbrick it.
If you found or have that program plz hel[ me with it.