Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

Hello,
DISCLAIMER:
I have searched through this forum and I couldn't get any exact info about what I can do with this problem. I don't like creating semi-duplicate threads, but I'd have to revive not-exactly-related ones otherwise.

My USB port had broken about two months ago. It wasn't much of a problem for me, as I could use the external charger. But then I wanted to try Nemo once again (I know, stupid decision in that situation), so I installed U-Boot and U-Boot bootable kernel power image.

I have installed U-Boot few times before, without any problem, but this time, I can start neither the original kernel nor kernel power (as I believe some boot files that were supposed to be generated are missing). I can start Nemo, though, and access the filesystem that way. I have done my backup and I eventually plan to solder the broken USB back, but here's my question now:

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With working U-Boot and microSD card boot, but without the possibility of booting straight into Maemo and without the USB port, is it possible to flash Maemo image back to the device (or revive it differently)?

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Thank you for your answers, in advance. I have bought a new N900, so this is not a matter of life and death, but it is sad having a half-dead one on my table.

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

Which u-boot do you have? Pali's or u-bootpr1.3

Regardless of the answer, if you execute

or
in the u-boot console,

what output do you get?

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

Thanks for answering. That is a tricky question, though, that's why I'm replying that late.

I have u-bootpr1.3 and I have power kernel img for u-boot installed. I'm pretty sure that the problem is, u-boot post install files weren't correctly generated, therefore u-boot cannot find the boot.scr file. I tried to put a new one on emmc from Nemo, so that's why I'm not getting the right debug output right now. Anyways, is there any boot.scr for my kernel I could download/generate in my situation?

I have given up on this solution, that's why I created a new thread with topic different to the u-boot's thread.

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

I don't have experience with u-bootpr1.3, only with Pali's u-boot. I had a more-or-less similar situation with a N900 where neither microUSB nor the microSD were working and Maemo didn't boot.

Using the U-boot console I was able to boot the kernel (which was stored in Mydocs) using a custom command line.

But you'd first need to know if you have a kernel image stored somewhere accessible (Pali's u-boot can fetch a kernel from Mydocs).

I guess the best is if you can post the exact output/description of what happens when you turn the N900 and try to boot Maemo. We can take it from there.

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

Still, with u-boot unable to find boot.scr, it should still be able to boot the attached kernel. The command for uboot-pr13 is run noloboot, if it doesn't boot it should at least provide some helpful error message.

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

If you flashed the 0.4-2 release of Pali's u-boot and it half-bricked, the issue is that the bootloader somehow causes kernels to not recognize the presence of the 256MB NAND device at all. If you try to flash it from within the device, it'll probably stall after not being able to find that chip. This doesn't have anything to do with where you load the kernel from - if you load the power kernel from u-boot, it actually loads the kernel itself from the MMC partition.

There might be a way to turn off whatever is causing this from within the bootloader itself (didn't Pali say that it had something to do with OneNAND support?) but I haven't found this yet...

(Now, if only I could find a place which will repair an N900 USB port... I don't have the soldering abilities to do it myself, not to mention that I'd have to take the USB port off first, and finding somewhere/someone to do this in the US has gotten incredibly tricky...)

Edit: Wait, the problem is with the boot.scr? If that were the case, shouldn't "run attachboot" (which *should* ignore boot.scr issues) start up the attached kernel properly? (Although if you're using Power kernel+CSSU-Thumb, you'd have something that would probably crash shortly into the boot).

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

IS there any way to re-flash a n900 with a broken usb with uboot 2012.10-rc3-1 and a 2.6.28-omap1 kernel installed?

I attempted to solder a blown fuse, and ended up destroying the surrounding circuitry/smds, thus rendering my usb port useless for charging/pc connectivity.

I'd like to wipe it clean, everything, and start over, then use backup menu to make sure i have something to default back to incase any thing goes screwy. Currently theres alot of clutter on this particular device, and i just want a vanilla rom, kernel, ect.

Anyone have a link that describes the process or can help me out here?

Twould be much appreciated, and i'll dwolla/pp/venmo $5, and a $5 donation to maemo.org to the first person who can help me flash this device.

PM if interested, or post a reply. First post to give me the answer gets the $5. Even if its not possible to flash, and you helped affirm that fact, i'll still donate $5 to maemo.

Also, have another n900 (along with a usb functional backup unit en-route) if theres some way to do this with backup menu, or taking a vanilla image of one n900 and flash it on the damaged usb device somehow. I have a sd card to transfer the image/backup.

Thanks-

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

Dont know about that but mx key hwk cyclone and infinity work more or less nicely:)
hope u get acces to one.

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

Sorry for reviving such an old thread (even though it is mine).

I haven't been able to revive my old N900 and bought a new one long time ago (and moved to Jolla since), but it still bugs me that this device is perfectly fine, just the USB port is broken and the system needs reflashing. So I had an idea... Any thoughts on the following plan?

1. boot NemoMobile from MicroSD (works fine)
2. chroot into Maemo (I think this worked as well)
3. install backupmenu in the chroot (this is the part I'm most worried about - it could break my access to U-Boot in the future, if I mess it up)
4. flash an image from backupmenu

I'm not sure if 3) can be done from chroot, but I can't see why not, if I mount all partitions.

Re: Is it possible to revive a N900 with U-Boot enabled and broken USB?
 

I've never tried it myself (touch wood, never had to) but it sounds like a plan. You should not need "all" partitions, only root and opt. Of course you will need MyDocs and/or SD for making/restoring backups.

BTW, do you happen to know what the damage is? I mean, if chroot works, perhaps you might be able to fix it right from there, without backupmenu.