Original "Simple" debricking methods for K5-Touch, K4-Mini, & K3-Keyboard

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by porcdecaine

Thank you for your answer. I didn't expect to be able to do that damage with that comand Anyway,

I bought a new one yesterday. Could i use that one to repair the bricked one? I don't connect to amazon anyway.

If you know the original serial number (from the shipping box or your amazon account) and the MAC address, you should be able to repair it. You need a "mostly valid" pcbsn to get it to boot past RAM init.

When I tried borrowing the identity values from another K4, then later when I wrote the original ones, I could not register it (until a tech at amazon fixed it in their database).

[hawhill]

Originally Posted by xray

When I start atk and click next it says no usb detected. Should I have the kindle plugged into usb before starting ATK? When I connect k3 to computer with usb it does recognize the kindle and even shows me all of the books I have on it. On device manager it shows up under portable devices.

No, you should go and read about how to bring your device into USB downloader mode. Besides plugging it in, it involves holding a button (Vol- I think, or was it Vol+) pressed during early boot-up. It's all pretty well explained in the guides, I advise strongly to go, read it carefully, understand about each step and generally follow given advise in these guides. Especially the one about charging your battery (and not trusting the LED).

[ppoo]

I can't connect Kindle Touch through serial port

PHP Code:

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test@test-test:~$ sudo minicom --device /dev/ttyUSB0
[sudo] password for test: 

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OPTIONS: I18n 
Compiled on May  2 2011, 10:05:24.
Port /dev/ttyUSB0

Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys 


<-- Stop here

[ppoo]

I need u-boot bootloader and MBR file but I don't know where it placed. Anyone knows? Thanks

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by ppoo

I need u-boot bootloader and MBR file but I don't know where it placed. Anyone knows? Thanks

I sent you a link for mmcblk0-5.0.4.bin in a PM.

It is for firmware version 5.0.4, but it should work. It is the first 32MB, starting at offset 0x0. It contains what you need, including MBR, uboot bootloaders, and kernels.

WARNING: Do not flash the whole thing, or you could over-write your idme vars with zeros, making your kindle forget its identity (serial, pcbns, etc.).

It would be good if you had a backup copy of those.

Best to not flash the entire thing. Either cut it down to whatever size or pieces you need, or specify a safe length when flashing it.

[ppoo]

@geekmaster: Thank you so much, I will try it.
I discovers that when pcbns,serial, etc. is erased fastboot can't flash to mmc(Not only recharing problem - I've recharged a week ).So I rewrited pcbsn,mac,..., fastboot again and flash function run OK.
It work OK now.

Spoiler:

UPDATE:
Now I my kindle work but I must use imx_usb main.bin to boot, It seem that bootloader has wrong size or bist is corrupted.
I used

dd if=mmcblk0.img of=mbr bs=1 count=512  <--Get 512B mbr
dd if=mmcblk0.img of=bootloader skip=1 bs=512 count=734 <--Get 376KiB bootloader

Then my kindle's identity are empty ??? I must use fastboot to write it again and reboot KT, it can't boot, the screen is stand.
Next, I use sudo ./imx_usb diags.bin it works and sudo ./imx_usb main.bin also work.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by ppoo

@geekmaster: Thank you so much, I will try it.
I discovers that when pcbns,serial, etc. is erased fastboot can't flash to mmc(Not only recharing problem - I've recharged a week ).So I rewrited pcbsn,mac,..., fastboot again and flash function run OK.

That is a known situation.
The firmware requires some of that information to configure and run the dynamic ram.
And fastboot requires the dynamic ram to be running, it will not run in only the on-chip ram.

[ayhan]

hi everyone, l have kindle touch but stuck in demo mode. l bought it in demo mode.
how can l fix it ???. somebody can help me...

[knc1]

Originally Posted by ayhan

hi everyone, l have kindle touch but stuck in demo mode. l bought it in demo mode.
how can l fix it ???. somebody can help me...

Replace the demo system with the standard system.
Just follow the directions here for "de-bricking" your K5 (Kindle Touch).

[ayhan]

can u tell the process whit picture or video that would be nice for me l can't realy follow the phase...tank you for your help...

[knc1]

Originally Posted by ayhan

can u tell the process whit picture or video that would be nice for me l can't realy follow the phase...tank you for your help...

Sounds like it will be a great learning opportunity for you.
Use any of the public machine translators to help you.

[sheenk]

Need help on SSH connection!

My KT was bricked after running out of battery.

I tried to debrick it following instructions from this post: USB debricking for noobs (K4/K5): https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=180789, and was stuck when trying to SSH to KT with putty, each time when i tried got a warning "PuTTY Fatal Error Network error: Connection refused".

The OS i'm using is windows 7 64 bit. After struggling with the drivers, i successfully boot into flashboot mode and flashed the diags_kernel (diags_kernel-5.0.0: http://www.mediafire.com/?wxv0eat6lcz6mx6) and diags ( mmcblk0p2_ssh-5.0.1: http://ixtab.tk/kindle-touch-images/...ags+ssh.img.gz) (also tried other images ). Then reboot into diags mode, selected N) U) Z) X), and installed driver "Remote NDIS based Internet Sharing Device", set IP of this connection to 192.168.15.201 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0. Then tried to connect with PuTTY and got the error as described above.

I also tried with different computers and the result is the same.

Does anyone has any idea what would be the problem?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by sheenk

Need help on SSH connection!

My KT was bricked after running out of battery.

I tried to debrick it following instructions from this post...

A dead battery is not "bricked". However trying to flash different firmware with a discharged battery could certainly brick it. It was probably NOT bricked when you started, but it certainly could have gotten bricked by attempting to debrick it unnecessarily (and unsuccessfully).

Why did you decide to debrick it instead of just charging the battery on a wall charger for 20 hours?

However, it sounds from your description that diags SSH should work. Did you flash the matching diags kernel?

[sheenk]

Thanks for your reply!

It did work after recharged, the problem is all the documents were lost, so i tried to reboot it and it's stuck in the Kindle Tree. Not sure if this was caused because of the dead battery or numerous files (i subscribed to some news feeds).

I flashed both the diags and diags kernel downloaded from the same post, they should match each other. And i also tried diags and diags kernel from other posts, none worked.

I can successfully mount the device as a network adapter and assign IP, dose that mean diags SSH work?

One odd thing is after flashed the kernel and diags, i run the command "fastboot setvar bootmode diags", then run "fastboot getvar bootmode", the result is "bootmode: main", after "fastboot reboot", it will try to boot into the main system instead of diags, so i have to reboot into diags with MfgTool. Not sure if this is normal.

Inputs and outputs in cmd window as follows:

D:\fastboot_win_public>fastboot flash diags_kernel diags_kernel.img
downloading 'diags_kernel'...
OKAY [ 0.224s]
writing 'diags_kernel'...
OKAY [ 0.274s]
finished. total time: 0.499s

D:\fastboot_win_public>fastboot flash diags mmcblk0p2.img
downloading 'diags'...
OKAY [ 2.830s]
writing 'diags'...
OKAY [ 3.521s]
finished. total time: 6.351s

D:\fastboot_win_public>fastboot setvar bootmode diags
setting 'bootmode' to 'diags'...
bootmode diags:
finished. total time: 0.009s

D:\fastboot_win_public>fastboot getvar bootmode
bootmode: main
finished. total time: 0.002s

D:\fastboot_win_public>

Another odd thing is after boot into diags mode and mounted Kindle as USB device, i deleted all files in "documents" and "music" folders, and copied "mmcblk0p1-main.img" to Kindle. After reboot, the deleted files were restored and "mmcblk0p1-main.img" became a 0 bytes file.

Originally Posted by geekmaster

A dead battery is not "bricked". However trying to flash different firmware with a discharged battery could certainly brick it. It was probably NOT bricked when you started, but it certainly could have gotten bricked by attempting to debrick it unnecessarily (and unsuccessfully).

Why did you decide to debrick it instead of just charging the battery on a wall charger for 20 hours?

However, it sounds from your description that diags SSH should work. Did you flash the matching diags kernel?

[Kaverin]

I just wanted to put in a reply here and (quite happily) say that I just debricked a Kindle Touch I got recently. I've had a Nook Simple Touch for almost a year now and love it, but I wanted to pick up a KT and use it as an ecookbook basically. I got one with a broken screen (but working internals) from eBay with the intention to fix it, but it turns out that the other non working one I got later with an intact screen worked perfectly once it had charged and I did a factory restore and registered it to myself. But soon after is when it went downhill...

When I was updating to 5.1.0, I ended up bricked, and stuck in a "Your Kindle needs repair" bootloop. Since I'm a Windows user I was using MfgTool mainly (and the "noob" debricking guide PDF) and had everything working fairly well until I lost the libusb Kindle Touch device and couldn't get it back anymore, so I couldn't proceed in Windows. From that point I could still get diags working with MfgTool, but I think I was getting problems with fastboot, and couldn't get SSH access to continue the steps in the PDF anyway. I had Lubuntu 12.04 set up on a laptop but never got around to using it much, and decided I'd try that way. Since my Lubuntu install was nearly pristine I had to set up a lot of things here and there like libusb-dev and so on (which is a lot of fun for us Windows users to do when we have no clue what we're doing ), and also imx_usb_loader and yifanlu's kindle-fastboot. After about 6 frustrating hours last night, I made progress today once I had everything built. I still was able to follow the noob debricking PDF, but I was doing it solely from a linux environment.

So in short, now my Kindle is working fine (though still just on 5.0.0 at the moment, and I think it had 5.0.4 before it bricked itself). I'll update it later, but at least I know if it bricks itself again during a legitimate update like it did last time, I can fix it. I wanted to reply in here that I was successful and thank everyone involved in setting up this information for everyone.



Also, on a funnier note, I'd like to add that I found this out by accident. Before I had read (and experienced) how a bricked Kindle will drain its battery really fast, I had it sitting right on top of my Nook Touch, which was in sleep mode with wireless off, and 53% charge left. My only explanation is the constant wireless activity that drains bricked Kindles was somehow interacting with my Nook Touch and drained it as well. I was really freaked out when I went to read some more of a zombie anthology and my Nook was dead, and hilariously frozen in displaying the cover of the zombie book (I use Coolreader as my reader app for that feature). After plugging it into a charger though, the info screen about the charge being too low to power on came up so I realized what had happened. It wasn't something I verified by trying it again, but for anyone else out there working with bricked Kindles, you may want to keep them away from working ereaders while bricked.