[HOW TO RECOVER] So you bricked your box

[kax0]

Hi calc , can you tell me more about the USB method?

I disassembled the box.. but it seems that it doesn't have a serial port (pic attached) .

[Shimon]

calc If a fully working box lacks the pinhole, is "Reboot Recovery" app enough to trigger booting off the card? If not, how can you start upgrading?

[calc]

Hello, i tried this, but didn't get any success.

When i plug the box with the sd card nothing happend, no input on tv nor anything, i also tried with toothpick with no result. I got the .ini and UBOOT from Amlogic custom tool.
Is my box completly dead?

It's possible, however if your box has a serial pin header you can hook up to it and see what it shows. It you see at least the BL1 stage then you should be able to recover it.

You can also try the USB method which is a bit more complicated as well.

[kax0]

Hello, i tried this, but didn't get any success.

When i plug the box with the sd card nothing happend, no input on tv nor anything, i also tried with toothpick with no result. I got the .ini and UBOOT from Amlogic custom tool.
Is my box completly dead?

[calc]

If your box is really bricked then if you connect via serial console to it you will only see the following looping:

GXM:BL1:dc8b51:76f1a5;FEAT:ADFC318C:0;POC:3;RCY:0; EMMC:0;READ:0;CHK:AA;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:AA;USB:8;

This means that the box can't read the eMMC and the SD card, if you have one inserted, is not prepped to boot u-boot properly.

If you see u-boot loading then you might only have a problem with the boot.img or recovery.img and can be fixed a number of ways including the below.

A normal boot looks something like this:

GXM:BL1:dc8b51:76f1a5;FEAT:ADFC318C:0;POC:3;RCY:0;EMMC:0;READ:0;0.0;CHK:0;
TE: 147717

BL2 Built : 19:58:22, Aug 31 2016.
gxl g54c8aee - xiaobo.gu@droid05

set vdd cpu_a to 1120 mv
set vdd cpu_b to 1050 mv
set vddee to 1000 mv
Board ID = 2
CPU clk: 1200MHz
DQS-corr enabled
DDR scramble enabled
DDR3 chl: Rank0+1 @ 912MHz - PASS
Rank0: 1024MB(auto)-2T-13
Rank1: 1024MB(auto)-2T-13
DataBus test pass!
AddrBus test pass!
-s
Load fip header from eMMC, src: 0x0000c200, des: 0x01400000, size: 0x00004000
New fip structure!
Load bl30 from eMMC, src: 0x00010200, des: 0x01100000, size: 0x0000d600
Load bl31 from eMMC, src: 0x00020200, des: 0x10100000, size: 0x00015400
Load bl33 from eMMC, src: 0x00038200, des: 0x01000000, size: 0x000a9200
NOTICE:  BL3-1: v1.0(debug):2e39a99
NOTICE:  BL3-1: Built : 16:36:21, Sep 20 2016
aml log : bl31 normal boot !
[Image: gxl_v1.1.3153-831ee11 2016-09-23 19:09:41 yan.wang@droid05]
OPS=0x82
2b c1 3a 4d 9c 87 d8 6b 3e fe 40 85 [0.395813 Inits done]
secure task start!
high task start!
low task start!
INFO:    BL3-1: Initializing runtime services
WARNING: No OPTEE provided by BL2 boot loader
ERROR:   Error initializing runtime service opteed_fast
INFO:    BL3-1: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world
INFO:    BL3-1: Next image address = 0x1000000
INFO:    BL3-1: Next image spsr = 0x3c9


U-Boot 2015.01 (Oct 01 2016 - 13:36:46)

DRAM:  2 GiB
Relocation Offset is: 76ec9000

The boot loader stages BL1 to BL3-1 are ARM Trusted Firmware, click here for a lot more detail.
The boot loader stage BL3-3 is U-Boot.

BL1 - This is the Boot Loader stage 1 is not on the eMMC.
BL2 - This is the Boot Loader stage 2 and is on the eMMC.
BL30 - ? Not certain about this yet
BL31 - This is the Boot Loader stage 3-1 and is on the eMMC.
BL33 - This is the Boot Loader stage 3-3 and is on the eMMC. This is u-boot.

With a bricked device you likely do not have Boot Loader stages BL2 - BL3-3 in eMMC any longer.

HOW TO RECOVER WITHOUT USB BURNING TOOL

The only real difference is the method to get u-boot onto the sdcard. You can use dd on windows as well if you want, just remember to skip the first 512 bytes of the u-boot file and the sdcard.

Step 1:

You will need three files: aml_upgrade_package.img, aml_sdc_burn.ini, aml_sdc_burn.UBOOT
You can get the last two files from the first one by using the extraction code at this link or the Amlogic Customization Tool.

Step 2:

Windows
Use Amlogic Bootcard Maker to write aml_sdc_burn.UBOOT to the sdcard.

Linux
Use dd to write aml_sdc_burn.UBOOT to the sdcard. This will generally fit between the MBR and the first partition without any tweaking needed.

dd if=aml_sdc_burn.UBOOT of=/dev/device seek=1 skip=1 bs=512

Step 3:

Copy aml_upgrade_package.img and aml_sdc_burn.ini to the card.
Then stick the sd card into the slot and power the box on.

That's it.

Note: You can also use this method with the toothpick to update if your box isn't completely bricked. Since its not totally bricked it won't boot off the sdcard by default, which is why the toothpick is needed to tell it you are trying to upgrade.