Kindle 3 bricked, Kubrick not helping, help appreciated

[axm]

I have a bricked Kindle - it does not seem to boot anymore and would gladly accept advise. Hope this is the right place.

What did I do?

Short: I played around with the wifi daemon, caused an infinite reboot loop, got into reset mode and left the kindle sitting like that for a time. When I picked it up again, it was unresponsive.

Long:
1) After rooting the K3 Keyboard, first
2) I tried to connect it to a wlan without internet connection and followed this solution: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=237799 - however after adding the "-n" to the call of wifid in /etc/kdb.src/luigi/system/daemon/pmond/wifid/start_cmd the wifi selection would not pop up in the kindle ui anymore.
3) I inspected the logs and found a Java Exception (which I do not have anymore) that lead me to believe the wifi daemon I just messed with was no longer working.
4) I removed the '-n' (and booted again), but that had no effect. Then I started it manually in foregroung (-f), which worked (it put messages to stdout/stderr about not being able to kill sth. and a missing parameters, but these had been there I believe even before I messed with it)-
5) Then I edited start_cmd and removed the -f to see if that would work - which was a bad idea. The following reboot ended in the already mentioned boot loop.
6) I tried resetting (holf 30 sec on/off, hold 1 min Home), aborted it once (did not help) and reentered it. At this point I did not have time anymore and let it sit in this state for a couple of days (seemed better than an endless boot loop).
7) When I picked it up again, it was completely unresponsive, neither typing del, the reset characters or trying to soft reset showed an effect on the screen.
8) I tried Kubrick, which seemed to find and flash it correctly, at least it did not report any errors. However, this probably does no good as I still could not reboot at that (last?) step of the unbricking process.
9) Recharged for a day, repeated Kubrick, same result. It seemed the flashing (2nd flashing step) took longer, but I am not sure about that.

State description:
- No response on the screen itself at all, no flashing, still shows the reset page.
- Connecting it to a USB power source lits up the orange LED.
- in this state holding the power switch for 30 seconds switches this LED off, it lits again after releasing
- When not connected, holding the power switch turns on the green LED for some time, sometimes it blinks after this for short 3 blinks, sometimes it does not.
- I checked the cable that is not locked to the mainboard, seems to be fine.
- Another kindle in an online source had a reset button (http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/kindlehack.html), mine does not have it (blank space on mainboard there).
- Removing battery, holding power switch and reattaching the battery had no effects detectable by me.

Any tips to get it booting again?

[knc1]

Ignore the light.
The light (and the battery management) is partly under firmware control.
Your firmware is known to not be operating normally, so can you thrust the light?

The battery management (which includes the charger control) is partly under firmware control.
Your firmware is known to not be operating normally, so can you trust the charging controller?

Hook the device to a known good USB cable, using a known good wall charger, plugged into a wall outlet that does not get turned off by the light switch when you leave the room.
Leave there, hooked up, for a couple of weeks.
Yes, that word is: weeks, it is not a typo.

Why?
You have to presume that the charging controller is defaulting to the minimum trickle charge;
and
The battery is old, probably more 'rocks' than charge holding structure, it will be more likely to heat than to recharge;
and
There are boot time tests (such as file system tests) that get run and internal repairs attempted at each re-boot. Each time a change is made, these have to be restarted from the word go.
The eMMC device is not the fastest thing in the world, it can take a few weeks for the self-fix code to finish running.
and
The eMMC used has an internal controller, rather simple but "smarter" than a flash disk stick, not as "smart" as an SSD. Like any eeeprom device, it does not support a 'write' operation. The internal controller is faking a write operation out of an "Erase-Merge-Reprogram" sequence. When running one of these internal cycles (and there can be a lot of them running a file system repair application) any failure (including shortage of capacity) of its power source can cause that micro-controller to "get lost", locking up the process, never to be good for anything again except as recycled beach sand.
and
The K3 has a recognized failure mode, for totally unknown reasons, that is exactly as you describe. This failure mode can not be recovered from, sorry about that, it is a built-in feature of the K3.

For all of the above, the correct word is indeed: weeks.

And don't expect successful results.
This is just the best "first thing to try".

In the mean time, use the sticky "where do I start" master index to look up how to connect to the K3 serial port.
It will most likely be required.

While doing all of the above, keep in mind that Amazon is offering a trade-in allowance of from $5 to $10 on a K3. Yours is at the $5 end of the offers.
You could probably e-bay the display for about those amounts.
As used beach sand (silicon) that has to be re-ground - it isn't worth the time and effort to throw it away.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by axm

I have a bricked Kindle - it does not seem to boot anymore and would gladly accept advise. Hope this is the right place.

What did I do?

Short: I played around with the wifi daemon, caused an infinite reboot loop, got into reset mode and left the kindle sitting like that for a time. When I picked it up again, it was unresponsive.

Long:
1) After rooting the K3 Keyboard, first
2) I tried to connect it to a wlan without internet connection and followed this solution: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=237799 - however after adding the "-n" to the call of wifid in /etc/kdb.src/luigi/system/daemon/pmond/wifid/start_cmd the wifi selection would not pop up in the kindle ui anymore.
3) I inspected the logs and found a Java Exception (which I do not have anymore) that lead me to believe the wifi daemon I just messed with was no longer working.
4) I removed the '-n' (and booted again), but that had no effect. Then I started it manually in foregroung (-f), which worked (it put messages to stdout/stderr about not being able to kill sth. and a missing parameters, but these had been there I believe even before I messed with it)-
5) Then I edited start_cmd and removed the -f to see if that would work - which was a bad idea. The following reboot ended in the already mentioned boot loop.
6) I tried resetting (holf 30 sec on/off, hold 1 min Home), aborted it once (did not help) and reentered it. At this point I did not have time anymore and let it sit in this state for a couple of days (seemed better than an endless boot loop).
7) When I picked it up again, it was completely unresponsive, neither typing del, the reset characters or trying to soft reset showed an effect on the screen.
8) I tried Kubrick, which seemed to find and flash it correctly, at least it did not report any errors. However, this probably does no good as I still could not reboot at that (last?) step of the unbricking process.
9) Recharged for a day, repeated Kubrick, same result. It seemed the flashing (2nd flashing step) took longer, but I am not sure about that.

State description:
- No response on the screen itself at all, no flashing, still shows the reset page.
- Connecting it to a USB power source lits up the orange LED.
- in this state holding the power switch for 30 seconds switches this LED off, it lits again after releasing
- When not connected, holding the power switch turns on the green LED for some time, sometimes it blinks after this for short 3 blinks, sometimes it does not.
- I checked the cable that is not locked to the mainboard, seems to be fine.
- Another kindle in an online source had a reset button (http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/kindlehack.html), mine does not have it (blank space on mainboard there).
- Removing battery, holding power switch and reattaching the battery had no effects detectable by me.

Any tips to get it booting again?

First off do what knc1 says. Then unplug it and hold the power button for up to 40 seconds.
Do not mess with the battery or anything else.

Now on Friday, I thought my K5 had died. It had the connect battery screen. I charged it. Light changed colors but screen stayed the same. Unplugged and let it sleep on the table overnight. Got up, pushed the power button, light blinked at me a few times and went to a white screen. Gave up and put it on the table. Within 5 minutes, it winked at me and restarted.

[axm]

Thanks - will try it. That device was meant to be for spare parts (screen) anyway, so I will hook it up at least until I have the time and need to disassemble it.

I am doing this for fun anyway - this was not anywhere close to worth the time from the beginning.

[axm]

Now it is fine again - took shorter than I was prepared to wait. It took about 1.5 weeks (I removed/reattached the battery after 1 week of this - don't know if that resets anything).

Thanks.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by axm

Now it is fine again - took shorter than I was prepared to wait. It took about 1.5 weeks (I removed/reattached the battery after 1 week of this - don't know if that resets anything).

Thanks.

Ah, so.
It was one of the mystery deaths of a K3.
What we have never figured out why it happens.

They don't always recover, but sometimes they do.

[rolgiati]

Originally Posted by knc1

Ignore the light.
The battery is old, probably more 'rocks' than charge holding structure, it will be more likely to heat than to recharge;

Does this mean it would be a Good Idea to replace the battery with a newer completely charged one before one tries unbricking ?

[axm]

This is a 5 year old thread, just saying.

Nevertheless: from what I understood from knc1s explanation, that would not do much good in the overall picture. Cinisajoy already explicitely warned against messing with the battery.