Topic: Bricked?

I should note before I start that I did open my chumby to solder wires to the debug serial port. However, after this procedure it was working fine for several days and the debug port was working (I used "screen" as my terminal emulator over 38400 baud).

Last night, after leaving the chumby up and running alone for several hours, I came back to a solid white screen. Rebooting gives me nothing but this solid white screen. If I leave it alone for a few minutes, it changes to a white screen with a solid black line down the middle - and during this process the debug port spits out a bunch of stuff. Probably part of the boot process.

Now here's the bummer: The debug port, which was working just fine, now spits out a bunch of gobbledygook! I can see that some of the characters are bits of valid words that do come up during the boot process (like part of the word "Chumby") so I'm wondering if the port is running at some other baud rate now?? 38400 is not working. I've tried a few others, but no luck, just garbage.

I've tried loading a USB thumbdrive with various scripts, including attempting to automatically start sshd as an alternative to get in, but no avail. Ideas?

A bit annoyed because I've only had the thing 2 weeks and it may already be bricked ...

Thanks!

Re: Bricked?

One thing I just discovered is the supposed 3.3V pin on the debug port is actually outputting 4.9V. Don't think that's right ...

Re: Bricked?

My chumby also started booting up to a white screen.  I'm not sure what happened on mine.  Mine is a chumby one with the beta firmware on it.  If it doesn't come back soon I'll try downgrading the firmware or reinstalling the beta.  Its interesting because on mine I can tell it is locked up because when I press the power button I have to hold it for 5 seconds before it will turn off

Re: Bricked?

I took the battery out and now it powers on fine.  After a while I put the battery in it while it was one and it seems back to normal

Re: Bricked?

Thanks for the suggestions.

I should note that this is a Chumby Classic, so no battery.

Not sure I can downgrade the firmware ... I tried booting with new firmware on USB stick, but no avail.

Re: Bricked?

You do know you have to go into the Special Options menu to load off USB I presume?

Re: Bricked?

Yes, but I can't load the special options menu. Booting while pressing screen does nothing. Screen just stays white. Serial debug outputs garbage.

Considering I opened the thing, I'm wondering if I somehow wasn't careful enough with the static sensitive components. The odd thing is though that it seems to be booting, because the debug port does spew out a bunch of stuff just like it would during the boot sequence, except that none of it is readable.

Re: Bricked?

svoisen wrote:

Yes, but I can't load the special options menu. Booting while pressing screen does nothing. Screen just stays white. Serial debug outputs garbage.

Considering I opened the thing, I'm wondering if I somehow wasn't careful enough with the static sensitive components. The odd thing is though that it seems to be booting, because the debug port does spew out a bunch of stuff just like it would during the boot sequence, except that none of it is readable.

Do you have the speed set correctly for your serial connection?  It should be 38400 baud.  I get garbage if I leave it on 115200 which most of my other devices use.

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker