Bricked Prometheus - and proven unbrick method

[bert21]

Hi

I seem to have bricked my Prometheus when trying to upgrade to the Android 4.2 rom
When I power on the blue and red lights stay on, and it does not flick on or off..
and the tv gets no input over the hdmi

i am getting a little bit frustrated to with tronsmart.
Android 4.1.2 was Nice but far away from perfect.
but still getting better every single time if there was a update

and now we're back to square one with the 4.2 update.
mabe tronsmart thinks her customers are all beta testers.
and flashing back to the old rom i have bricked my device

luckily for me i ordered a minix neo x5.
i will keep the device, until i know how to unbrick the tronsmart.



I was wondering if anyone had any tricks or tips for me to restore.

[Finless]

I just unbricked mine! So I know how to do it as long as it is a soft or hard brick. If it is a deep hard brick, I have not learned to do that which requires shorting NAND pins.

I will do a write up on how to do it but basically I followed these instructions:

http://adityagilra.blogspot.com/2013/03/unbricking-upgrading-gadmei-e8hd.html#!/2013/03/unbricking-upgrading-gadmei-e8hd.html

Do not download any of those ROMs The key for me was to use u-boot.bin from the Prometheus ROM and write it to SD card as explained using DD. Then create the fat32 parition as explained and copy over the update files.

I then insterted the SDcard and held the reset pin and powered on. A few secondsd later the blue LED went back to blinking 3 times like it should. That means it booted off sdcard and wrote it to NAND!

Then I powered off as it did not seem to want to update from this odd formatted sdcard. But at least u-boot was back in NAND. So I then reformatted the SDcard using Windows normally and copied over the update files. Did the usual reset hole and power on and was back in business.


Now tip... Some of you wont have a linux install. Well the easy way to do this is to install Virtual Box and install Ubuntu into a VM. It's super easy. After that install the Extensions and now you can talk to SDcards, etc.

Again later I will do a full unbrick write up when I get some time.

Bob

[bert21]

when I put paper clip in the reset button and switched on I don’t have the 3 blinking lights reset .
The lights comes on stays still, there is no blink, so after a little while I took the paper clip out and waited for a little bit and then put the clip back on reset and waited for about 2 minutes but nothing happens on the TV screen.

thank you for looking into my problem

[Finless]

when I put paper clip in the reset button and switched on I don’t have the 3 blinking lights reset .
The lights comes on stays still, there is no blink, so after a little while I took the paper clip out and waited for a little bit and then put the clip back on reset and waited for about 2 minutes but nothing happens on the TV screen.

thank you for looking into my problem

Yep, you are bricked! You need to make a special SDcard as I explain above to unbrick it.

Bob

[tm1982]

I just unbricked mine! So I know how to do it as long as it is a soft or hard brick. If it is a deep hard brick, I have not learned to do that which requires shorting NAND pins.

I will do a write up on how to do it but basically I followed these instructions:

http://adityagilra.blogspot.com/2013/03/unbricking-upgrading-gadmei-e8hd.html#!/2013/03/unbricking-upgrading-gadmei-e8hd.html

Do not download any of those ROMs The key for me was to use u-boot.bin from the Prometheus ROM and write it to SD card as explained using DD. Then create the fat32 parition as explained and copy over the update files.

I then insterted the SDcard and held the reset pin and powered on. A few secondsd later the blue LED went back to blinking 3 times like it should. That means it booted off sdcard and wrote it to NAND!

Then I powered off as it did not seem to want to update from this odd formatted sdcard. But at least u-boot was back in NAND. So I then reformatted the SDcard using Windows normally and copied over the update files. Did the usual reset hole and power on and was back in business.


Now tip... Some of you wont have a linux install. Well the easy way to do this is to install Virtual Box and install Ubuntu into a VM. It's super easy. After that install the Extensions and now you can talk to SDcards, etc.

Again later I will do a full unbrick write up when I get some time.

Bob

Bob, do you think this method could work on a f16ref board aswell? I have a jesurun mp019 as explained in:

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?3982-Jesurun-MP019-(f16ref)-problems

I have managed to find a rom that should be a original one. And also i tried to put in a custom rom for the vissontech atv108 and it worked with wifi and such. both those devices are amlogic m3 and based from the same f16ref mbx reference board.

But after i installed tha latter one succesfully i just get a black/grey screen when starting (happanend to alot of these jesurun boxes what i have read., so im hoping of some kind of fix with a sdcard boot. But im not that good with things that are linux, just starting to learn.

So what im asking for would be a more distilled version of that guide you linked to that is for the promethius and i think that would work for my box to but with my own rom offcourse.

sorry for being stupid with linux commands and programs, but if i knew exactly what program to open and what to do in every program that would help me alot.

[bert21]

i spend a whole sunday morning with the tronsmart
the olney result i getting that the red and blue lights finally bliked.
but then the next step was to instal the original firmware on the sd card, when i did that the lights don't blink anymore

then i cudend retrace my steps anymore.


i will wait for a dummies guide for unbrick the tronsmart

[Finless]

i spend a whole sunday morning with the tronsmart
the olney result i getting that the red and blue lights finally bliked.
but then the next step was to instal the original firmware on the sd card, when i did that the lights don't blink anymore

then i cudend retrace my steps anymore.


i will wait for a dummies guide for unbrick the tronsmart

So what I did the next go around was once I got the blue LED to blink 3 times like it should. The minute I saw that I turned it off. Then formatted the SDcard with windows and copied all the files from the zip to it. There are only 5 files once you unzip the download from geekbuying. DO NOT unzip anything else. Just unzip the download and copy those files to sdcard.

Oh and make sure you format the sdcard as Fat32 in windows. Not NTFS, etc.

But you got the blinking LED so you made it. SOmething else went wrong after that! Perhaps you got a bad download of the ROM or something?

Bob

[bert21]

that's just the problem, i can't recall how i did that with the HxD Hex Editor
i did try it so many times, maybe by accident i did it one's just right

thank you finless bob for your efforts, but i yust my bricked my mind.
maybe i'm a missing somewhat or i may just being plain stu...d

[rapalax]

Bob,

If you bricked one of these babies, does it mean that you are making a ROM for it? If so, I'll buy one the moment you post a beta!

Love your ROMs on the RK3066 variants.

[tm1982]

Tried this method out on my bricked device and i got one step further, now instead of just a grey/black screen it stops at the boot logo.

Need a better firmware and im think it's a go. Bad thing is that i havnt found a original firmware, and no contact information for Jesurun devices. So im going with a custom firmware made for the vissiontech atv-108 version 2. Also a f16ref board with identical specs.

Anyways, it was a good method that i think will work for several different devices if you just implement your own firmware.

[Finless]

Tried this method out on my bricked device and i got one step further, now instead of just a grey/black screen it stops at the boot logo.

Need a better firmware and im think it's a go. Bad thing is that i havnt found a original firmware, and no contact information for Jesurun devices. So im going with a custom firmware made for the vissiontech atv-108 version 2. Also a f16ref board with identical specs.

Anyways, it was a good method that i think will work for several different devices if you just implement your own firmware.

So you have the Tronsmart Prometheus or something else?
If you have the Promehteus then you can get the stock firmware from geekbuying's blog.

Glad you got yourself unbricked!

To be honest I think it would be in the best interest of these AMLogic device companies to release a SDcard flash tool that will flash a SDcard from a PC .img to unbrick. Yes these DO exist for other tablets and AML devices. However I could not get it to work with the PC SDcard tools because other "special" files are needed to go on the SDcard with them (a special set of files not in a ROM). I hacked at that approach for DAYS using other u-boot.bin etc from other AML M6 devices and could never get any form of unbrick until I found that linux DD proceedure.

So the procedure I posted works but getting people to install linux and learn to use it, is a bit much for most. Since there are SDcard write tools that can do this, I may make an image of my DD created SDcard and then post the tool and image for people to use. But I must test it first and I hate to brick again just to find out

Anyway I was bricked for a week and I did nothing to cause it other than try to flash the stock 4.2.2 update. I even asked Geekbuying to please contact Tronsmart and ask them for the needed files to make the recovery SDcard. Since geekbuying is a registered seller on Tronsmarts web site, you would think Tronsmart would support them? Alas I do not think Geekbuying ever got a response. I see on Tronsmarts facebook page MANY people complaining of getting bricked with the 4.2.2 update and there is no response from them. So I guess it is up to us to help others!

PS, Yes I do plan to do a ROM for this device

Bob

[bert21]

thanks to bob,

i made a little document how i made the sd card.
but the second part, when i Reinstall the firmware cannot do.
but the sd card is working.


it is 1,3 mb thare can i upload it

[Finless]

thanks to bob,

i made a little document how i made the sd card.
but the second part, when i Reinstall the firmware cannot do.
but the sd card is working.


it is 1,3 mb [email protected].

So you get the 3 blinks of the blue LED but it wont install the ROM from a fresh formatted SDcard?

So just a tip if this helps. The first time I installed the 4.2.2 update I got the 3 blinks but nothing happened. I waited about 3 minutes. I swtiched it off and back on and it started the update on it's own. So I figured this was probably the process when it gets stuck. LAter while trying to ROM testing I decided to flash back to stock and same thing. 3 blinks and nothing. Only this time I did not wait 3 minutes I swtiched it on and off right awat thinking on power on again it would start up and do what it did last time. THAT is how I bricked it!

Then the first time after unbrick when I did it, I got nothing again. LED blinked 3 times and I waited for 5 minutes and nothing. I turned it off and back on and on boot up it went into recovery and started installing the udpate! So there is something odd with it not starting the update sometimes. What exactly that is I have not figured out yet. But since you now know how to unbrick, try different ways.


As for you document... Do you have a google drive or drop box? If so I can download it and put it on our server for others to download.

Thanks,
Bob

[bert21]

thanks again bob

here is the link https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxup...it?usp=sharing
so if there's anything needs to chance feel free to do so.

[tm1982]

So you have the Tronsmart Prometheus or something else?
If you have the Promehteus then you can get the stock firmware from geekbuying's blog.

Glad you got yourself unbricked!

Kind of unbricked anyways, the firmware i got isnt working as i want i get :

-- Program mac...
Finding mac...
can't get efuse info
E:mac written already or something error
Failed to write mac
efuse write MAC addr failed.

So im still at a standstill, i can get into recovery but i cant get into android... maybe there is a linux/ubuntu install i could try to get some life into this machine (Jesurun MP019, f16ref MBX reference board). Or some way to edit the ethmac.efuse to have a mac adress that my device likes...