PW2 5.6.5 Jailbreak Without Soldering

[DennisH]

I was one of those waiting for the closed kindle 5.6.5 jailbreak so when that fell through I decided to have a go at opening the PW2 and installing the jailbreak via the serial port.

I have several PW2s so I was keen to get on with it.

First up, opening the PW2 is a lot easier than I thought it would be. The plastic bezel which has to be lifted is very tough and flexible and there is little to no chance of breaking it. The biggest risk is to damage the screen but with a bit of care and by going slowly that risk is fairly small also. I read elsewhere on this forum that using a heat gun or hair dryer makes it easier and that is certainly my experience. It also makes reassembly easier to heat the kindle and the bezel (and hence the residual glue) before snapping the bezel back in place.

After doing the first PW2 I found it easier to lift the bezel by doing the top edge last. This is because there is some pretty tough double sided sticky tape under the top edge and it is easier to work the bezel free by lifting it evenly across the full width. Anyway, there is a fairly high chance that the tape might tear a little but it is not a problem for reassembly. The rest is straightforward.

I used a TTL-232RG-VREG1V8-WE usb to serial cable with an ftdi chip in it. The cable has six open tinned wires on the serial end.

For the first PW2 I soldered wires to the serial pads. I have got a really good temperature controlled fine tip soldering iron and a decent desk top magnifying glass but because I am left handed and the pads are hard up against a metal cover I found it very difficult to do the soldering. With some perseverance I did succeed and by connecting ground, tx, and rx only (no other voltage connections required) I succeeded in getting the jailbreak installed.

I have a windows 10 pc and I was running Teraterm as the serial program interface. The TTL-232RG installed automatically and Teraterm found it on a usb com port ok. However, when I first connected the usb to serial cable and set Teraterm to 115200 I was getting immediate key responses but it was gibberish. It took a couple of 15 second reboots to get the PW2 and Teraterm to sync properly. This was probably a timing error on my part but eventually the link settled down and was flawless. I also found that I had to be really quick after a reboot to hit an enter key to get into uboot.

Back to the point of this post. I wasn't looking forward to wrestling with the soldering iron for my other PW2s so having realised I only needed two 'difficult' connections for tx and rx (earth connections are available in many places - eg, on metal covers, on screws, and solder pads) and that I only needed those connections for a couple of minutes I devised a simpler method which was OK for a temporary connection - see photos.

I simply sticky taped a piece of high density foam to the top of a cover next to the serial port pads and used the foam to support two sewing pins that are pushed through the foam and down onto the tx and rx pads. The big breakthrough was that when I raided my wife's sewing box I found both an orange and a yellow pin which happen to be the wire colours for rx and tx on the usb to serial cable! The pins push into the solder enough to make the connections more than good enough to do the job. It takes only a few minutes to get the jailbreak installed (note: the jailbreak was preloaded via the normal usb connection and the password was pre-caclulated using:

print("fiona%s"%hashlib.md5("905A22014516049H\n".e ncode('utf-8')).hexdigest()[13:16])

on an IDLE platform.

I don't know if it is a feature of the TTL-232RG cable or not but it helped only having to use three wires. The earth was easy as it was just clipped onto a screw head as in the photo. So it comes down to just getting two connections in place and that turns out to be very easy also.

I hope this helps someone else get the job done.

[grant2]

That's really awesome. I wish i'd seen this before i destroyed my kindle

[NiLuJe]

FWIW, as the log confirms, the JB would only actually be properly installed by the bridge on your next reboot. The JB script isn't designed to run from diags, only from the main system, hence it only did half the job, and left the rest to the bridge.

Not a huge issue with recent versions, but that didn't use to be the case, and it needed to be said .

Sidenote: KindleTool can handle the password stuff just fine (via the info command), if dealing with Python is an issue.

Apart from that: love it ^^.

[DennisH]

Hi NiLuJe,

Just to be sure, having rebooted, I take it I am now fully installed and do not need to take further action?

I have taken so much from this forum, especially from yourself but many others as well. You have all provided great insights that are well beyond me so I wanted to give at least something back, even if it is only mechanical.

I have had a 5.4.3.2 PW2 for a couple of years and have Python running on it and I also use the IDLE IDE on my PC so the Python part was easy once I got the right code. There are many versions floating around on Mobilread buy yours was the only one that worked for my PW2s. I blanked out the serial no on the photo but I forgot to do it in the text. The PW2s I have at the moment are 905A versions.

[NiLuJe]

@DennisH: Yup, you're set .

That said, I'll be fixing the JB script to behave better on diags, that was a dumb early decision that doesn't really apply anymore (especially since, ironically enough, the bridge script does handle diags properly, while it has approximately zero chance of ever being run from diags... >_<").

[DennisH]

NiLuJe,

OK. Great. In my ignorance I did it from diags without realising. On the plus side it only took a few minutes for the whole jailbreak and I did not realise the bridge was saving me.

This was the first time I had to use the MR Package Installer. That is brilliant and much easier than doing updates separately. Many thanks. It is always dangerous singling people out but the posts by yourself, Twobob, Geekmaster, KNC, Hawhill and others make this whole business exciting, even for a seventy year old.

[NiLuJe]

FWIW, I just updated the snapshots with the tweaks I just mentioned .

[kleinjar]

Do you think i could do this if i just peel the ends of the wires and blutack the exposed wires to the relevant connections, no soldering?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by kleinjar

Do you think i could do this if i just peel the ends of the wires and blutack the exposed wires to the relevant connections, no soldering?

Is blu tack conductive?
You need a conductive (metal-to-metal) path between the "exposed wire" to the "relevant connection".
See my "Paint and Play" thread.

[DennisH]

kleinjar,

I think it would be possible but it would probably take you a lot longer than using pins and I think it would be a lot more difficult. The pads are very small and close together and just positioning the wires would be hard to do - and that would be before you worry about getting good contact. On the other hand the pins have sharp points and are easy to position.

The pins can be pushed into the pad solder enough to make them rigid so that they can support the alligator clips. I used a piece of foam which I just happened to have lying around. A piece of stiff cardboard would be OK too, maybe even better because you could angle the pins a little more easily. A small angle is needed so the tops of the pins spread apart far enough to put the alligator clips on without them touching. You can set the pins up and be connected in 90 seconds tops (although I have done a few of these now).

[knc1]

You do want the mechanical support of the (weight of the) pins and any alligator clips.

You do not need the alligator clips, instead you can very tightly wrap the wire(s) on the pin(s).
Tight!!

My choice would be adhesive backed foam.
The sort of stuff that is sold as a gasket strip.

Get white if you can, avoid black and gray. Those colors probably come from conductive additives - which you do not want, it would create a short circuit between the pins.

Alternatives:
The 'rubber' stick-ons sold as non-scratch leg end feet.
Brown is probably alright, avoid black.

Any similar material + double sided tape to hold it in place.

Cut a small square of the adhesive backed foam, stick to the motherboard a small distance away from the connector, solder dots.
That is one less 'movable' piece to chase around while positioning the pins.

The pin, with the tightly wrapped wire lead on it, would go in the top of the foam and out the side of the foam, ending with the point at the solder dot.

Does the pin stay in place when you let go of everything?
Great!
Now push the pin point into the solder dot.
It doesn't have to go far, just enough to keep the pin from moving around or away from the dot.

That should do it for a good, temporary, connection.

[angomania]

Nice one! Good work.

Are there other RX and TX soldering points (as alternative) on the board of PW2/PW3 ?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by angomania

Nice one! Good work.

Are there other RX and TX soldering points (as alternative) on the board of PW2/PW3 ?

None have been reported as found.

The SoC has five (or six) UARTS on it, the location of the other 4 (or 5) have not been identified either.

[kleinjar]

Originally Posted by knc1

Is blu tack conductive?
You need a conductive (metal-to-metal) path between the "exposed wire" to the "relevant connection".
See my "Paint and Play" thread.

Not conductive, but I was thinking indeed of metal to metal and then just placing the blutack on top just to keep the wire in place.

Ok, i just might try it and then use foam and pins if it fails.

[Enor]

Anyone want to put together a video of how to do this from start to finish? (Pretty please!)

Some of us utter newbs might benefit from it.