Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

I pulled my N950 out of the drawer it's been sitting in for the past 6 or so years, in order to see if it can be made to work once again.

Tried to reflash it, but the flasher fails on both rootfs and emmc:

After trying some suggestions, I ended up flashing an old "rescue image" which lets me telnet into the device. Sadly, it looks like the eMMC and/or the NAND are dead. I'm getting a lot of ECC errors from the NAND, and a lot of I/O errors from the eMMC.

Here is the full dmesg log: https://pastebin.com/65eu3wqr

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

Yep, the infamous "bb5_rdc_cert_read failed" error means your emmc is cooked. I am not really sure how the chips are organized in N950 but at least N9 uses a chip on chip bonding which practically means the emmc is not separable from the SoC and cannot be easily replaced.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

If it can't do anymore harm I would suggest you try all different flash parameters to flash things separately couple of times. Do not give up hope before you have done all you can and tried all options there are. Then atleast you know for sure you ttied everything and no need to later think "what if..."

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

Hopefully screen has not "bled out" in which case I'm sure there will always be a market for it.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

Already tried that, with the flash-only option. It was able to flash everything except the rootfs and the emmc, sadly.

The screen has the usual issue, it has a non-functional area, but most of it is still visible.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

Have been reading threads about your problem and thought just to throw here things I find. So I do not know anything, just share findings.

flasher -F main.bin -F emmc.bin -f --no-preserve

Can this --no-preserve be used with other parts too?

Have you tried to flash an "erase image"?

Have you tried recreate partition table with gparted before flashing? I think this is partition table for N9 64Gb. Mismatches with partition table can cause problems. https://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?...6&postcount=17

And have you tried flashing with:

1. different Oses (win xp/7, mac, linux),
2. different machines
3. different cables
4. different usb ports
5. different image version/Os?


Have you tried flashing in rd-mode?

flasher --enable-rd-mode --set-rd-flags=no-lifeguard-reset

All things adviced as a solution and in some cases they solved the problem.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

I started to think how many options there really are if you really try flashing with different windows versions and with linux and mac and with different machines and usb ports and cables and flash image versions:

Machine 1:
3 usb ports

3 different usb cables in use

winxp/7/10 (needs probably usb driver downgrades and compatibility mode enables)

linux (probably needs and old usb driver)

mac (can not be installed machine 1)

The recreation of partition table should be done first, otherwise you have to try every option again.

And then with machine 2. And maybe 3, because usb ports are different, so machines of different ages (N950 era) is recommended.

And then all flashing options done with different cables with different usb ports with different machines with different Oses or Os versions and with different images and all above with or without rd-mode enabled.


So first with machine 1 with image 1 with cable 1 in usb port 1 in win Xp to try every flashing option code there can be found and allso rd-mode enabled.



Second the same with cable 2 still in usb port 1. And so on...


So if you want to be sure you really tried everything I hope you do not have plans for next year.


But for real: try ceating the partition table before flashing, and try different cable/usb port/host Os/img even with one basic flash parameter just to be sure they are not the problem, and if it has anything to do with this you can try rd-mode too.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

I mentioned in my post that I did try that, and I got an I/O error from the partitioning tool.

About trying with different cables and operating systems: I don't think that would help. The reason I don't think that, is because the flasher on this machine and with this cable, can flash everything but two very specific parts of the image.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

@maemish, cooked emmc is cooked emmc and there is no amount of software wizardy you can do to revive it.. tis is now solely in the domain of the hardware wizards.

Re: Is it possible to revive this N950?
 

As I said I do not know anything and just shared info I found. But it seems it was meaningless info then.