Boot loop - what's wrong?

[geekmaster]

Okay, I decide to measure the voltage on the battery (the pins are labelled). Zero, zip, nada, nothing. And more suspiciously, it is a cheap LiPo battery (like used in R/C toys) and its wrapper is "puffed" -- a sign of an expired LiPo. That explains a lot. I will try leaving (-) and (T) connected, but wire a 16850 lithium cell (like used en-masse in Tesla cars) to (-) and (-) on the kindle (leaving battery + disconnected). The (T) will be needed by the kindle boot code to assure it is connected to a "genuine" amazon battery. [Except the battery I2C (or whatever) may also need power from the battery? We shall see...

[geekmaster]

The PW2 batter has the same part number, and looks intact (no internal air pressure). And it measures 3.7V across the (+) and (-) terminals. Battery transplant in progress...

PW3 now booting on PW2 battery. Airplane mode -- oh... Cannot get to settings until registered, but need wifi in settings to register. Time to read the included manuals?

Plugging in USB cable to PC. USB drive mode works! The drive only has a documents folder though -- perhaps it needs a factory reset.

However, the good news is that the PW3 seems okay so far with a good battery installed. The PW2 has more serious issues, considering that it HAD a good batter and was totally dead.

[geekmaster]

I just added a DO_FACTORY_RESTORE file to USB storage, and noticed that it created a system folder while I was typing the previous message. Time to eject and reboot -- AFTER I see what files I can unerase on the shared vfat partition.

My unerase program shows that the kindle is shared as an MBR device, with one partition. That means that we should indeed be able to repartion it into multiple partitions, such as vfat AND ext3 (or more) and they should all get shared to the host PC. That could be very useful.

Hmm. Thorough scan, and no erased documents. Either a full (slow) format, or this device never had any content other than the default files. Time to reboot so it can do a factory restore (just because...).

[geekmaster]

I need a hint what to do now. The PW3 will not let me do ANYTHING but read books installed on it (including manual and setup guide). It has no menu, no home button, no clock -- just a "Register" link.

Clicking register wants you to setup wifi, but that could lead to an unfortunate update.

I am curious how to upgrade to 5.6.5 without a setup menu, so I can install the 5.6.5 jailbreak. There must be some way to bypass registration...

Ideas? Or does it automagically recognize update files when in this rather "brain dead" unregistered mode? I will try...

[geekmaster]

This thing let me navigate settings when it had a bad battery (while connected to a power supply), though it was flaky. On battery alone, it is locking me to registration, and clicking anything needs a hard reset because I have not figured out how to go back (no top menu with back and home buttons, and no backlight control, which WERE there before). The top line only has "Cloud | On Device -- All Items -- Recent", and at the bottom "Register Now". Nothing else...

And the setup guide DOES say that you must register before you can change most settings.

I tried letting it sniff for wifi networks, but it SEES NOTHING, which is not right...

So catch-22: need wifi to register, but need to register to access settings (though they worked before). Time to try it on a power supply (where it worked before).


Power cord in. Hard reset. Booting... Nope, still no Home button, or backlight control (and it defaults to too damned bright, even in daytime). The behavior changed with the battery swap. Maybe I should try the dead battery again (USB VID/PID 1949:dead). --- It boot-looped several times, then desktop. No backlight control like it had before. It seems to have factory reset BEFORE I even tried adding the factory reset flag file.

So, my big question is -- how do I jailbreak PW3 FW 5.6.1.1 with NO SETTINGS MENU? I tried jumpering the "USB BOOT" botton inside, but no apparent effect, and of course "ENABLE_DIAGS" is useless too... So perhaps the serial port is my only hope?

[geekmaster]

I see there are already pictures posted to this thread, so I need not do that:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=267541

My PW2 and PW3 boards look identical other than the silkscreen PCB part number. I see no obvious way to tell them apart other than the back cover (which is now off both of them).

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

I need a hint what to do now. The PW3 will not let me do ANYTHING but read books installed on it (including manual and setup guide). It has no menu, no home button, no clock -- just a "Register" link.

Clicking register wants you to setup wifi, but that could lead to an unfortunate update.

I am curious how to upgrade to 5.6.5 without a setup menu, so I can install the 5.6.5 jailbreak. There must be some way to bypass registration...

Ideas? Or does it automagically recognize update files when in this rather "brain dead" unregistered mode? I will try...

Put the update on the USB root, re-boot it (or wait for it to self-reboot in your case ).

That will get you 5.6.5 and **maybe** over-write whatever is so wonky (tm) about the current firmware installed. **maybe**.

Now jailbreaking it - ah, there you will have to be able to reach the Kindle's browser - -
But....
Maybe the update will have fixed that ...

[geekmaster]

I did put the update on usb root, and rebooted (long power hold). No settings menu, so no Restart and no UYK. Sadly, no way to tell if the update worked, because the firmware version is not on the "Register Now" display (which lets you read installed "User's Guide" and "Set Up" books).

What is weird is that it was also unregistered BEFORE, but let me browse settings. And the search commands worked too (such as ;711). But now there is no search button either...

Even IF the firmware updated to 5.6.5, there is no way to tell, and it is still stuck in "Register Now" mode which *IS* described in the "Set Up" guide. However, even IF I wanted to register now, the Register Now button takes me to wifi settings, and that asks for my login email and password, end after that it hands waiting for something, with nothing to press or click (other than a long power hold reset). It did not even ask to scan for available wifi networks this time (which hung last time with no results). This is very counterintuitive and very annoying. Lucky for most folks that a device comes pre-registered if purchased from amazon (as in the case of my PW1).

I suppose I could login to amazon on a PC and register it, but how would it know it was registered (and get out of this registration sandbox) if it cannot find wifi networks to connect to?

[geekmaster]

And even if I installed the jailbreak, it could still limit me to uselessness. Not sure if KUAL would work in this mode, and installing MKK would be a huge PITA with no UTK menu.

I wish I could get that UYK bootmode to work, but the documentation is confusing, mentioning USB OTG mode. Perhaps it tries to load a firmware image from a USB stick an an OTG cable? What is confusing is that some i.MX6 dev boards use imx_usbloader when a similar button is pressed on their dev kits. There are TWO bootmode pins on the SoC, so perhaps this button tirggers a behavior different from the magic key on earlier kindles -- like loading firmware from a flash drive on OTG, perhaps.

I really wish this had diags with usbnet... Time to hunt for a USB serial adapter.

[geekmaster]

I added that factory reset flag file and did the hard power reset. This time it asked me to choose a language, which reminded me that I did do a factory reset from the menu when it was on power supply with dead battery and rebooting itself far too often. I suspect the factory reset wiped the home menu and put it into the sandboxed mode mentioned in the setup guide.

Apparently just deregistering (it was not registered when I received it) still gives you a home menu and settings menu, but a full factory reset sandboxes you in "useless" mode (where I am now, after another factory reset)...

And this time after using the factory reset flag file, it booted direcdtly to "Connect to Wi-Fi", but clicking that does nothing (just like before), as if the touchscreen was disabled...

And before this reset, the keyboard was horribly sluggish, typing registration data might delay twenty seconds, then display a couple of typed chars. Pressing shift might take 10 seconds to draw the new keyboard. It is sure VERY BUSY doing a lot of nothing useful...

And I strongly suspect that a serial jailbreak will NOT get me out of this mode, and therefore no way to install MKK or other hacks, even WITH a jailbreak key. This new sandboxed Registration mode that is described in their included "Set Up" manual is very useless if it cannot connect to Wi-Fi (as in my case).

I just pressed the power button for about six seconds or so, and I got a popup window asking if I want to Cancel, Restart, or Screen Off. But the touchscreen is not working at the moment (though it does sometimes, but no way to really test if it works at all locations)... The menus SEEMED to work before the factory reset, so touchscreen may be fine...

[geekmaster]

Now after a hard reboot, touching the setup book says "opening", but then takes me to "Connect to Wi-Fi" with a message "in order to use your kindle and buy books, you need to connet to a Wi-Fi network and register your device". It no longer lets me read how to even USE this device. It must have a counter and I used up my book opens?

I cannot believe amazon does this to customers who buy unregistered (i.e. "gift") kindles...

Clicking the book worked. Clicking "connect to wifi" does NOTHING... Perhaps a bad touchscreen zone? Not sure yet, and no obvious way to test it.

Which reminds me, that screen-rotator app needs to ALSO rotate touchscreen coordinates to match the screen, or problems pressing buttons or menu items after screen rotation.

[eschwartz]

I don' believe Amazon does do that to people who buy unregistered Kindles.

In fact, IIRC it is pretty easy to just refuse to connect to a WiFi network and fail on trying to register, then go straight to regular old unregistered-but-perfectly-usable mode.

No clue why your wonky PW3 isn't offering that, but, well, it seems to have several problems. I'm not sure it is fair to judge newly-purchased PW3s based on that.

[knc1]

The 'register later' choice is very small, fine print in the lower corner of the screen.
It is possible that GM just didn't notice it.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I don' believe Amazon does do that to people who buy unregistered Kindles.

In fact, IIRC it is pretty easy to just refuse to connect to a WiFi network and fail on trying to register, then go straight to regular old unregistered-but-perfectly-usable mode.

No clue why your wonk PW3 isn't offering that, but, well, it seems to have several problems. I'm not sure it is fair to judge newly-purchased PW3s based on that.

Yeah...this is definitely NOT how an unregistered PW behaves (nor does any other Kindle behave like that, as far as I know...)

Shari

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

The 'register later' choice is very small, fine print in the lower corner of the screen.
It is possible that GM just didn't notice it.

Actually, no, my "wonk" PW3 does not have anything like that visible. I could post photos, I suppose. The problem is that some things (like the Wi_Fi link) are not clickable, which may be a "wonk" touchscreen. Though the behavior DID change -- before factory reset it was NOT registered, and yet gave me a home menu and settings menu (which are NOT there after factory reset). Now, even trying to open the "Set Up" book takes me straight to Wi-Fi settings and says I must register before I can use my kindle.

Before the factory reset it was much friendlier, and this new behavior seems like it would not be fixed by a jailbreak.

At the same time I got "must register" sandboxed, my eink waveform fixed itself (on factory reset). It was pure black and white, with really ugly screensavers. Now they look great. So I traded ugly eink for ugly borked user interface...

The problem is, if factory reset made it worse, WHAT can make it better (missing menu button-wise)?