Thread: Alpha 100 US in EU, problems after fw downgrade & cure used

jupigarmin,
Format Alpha with correct setting before do anything.

^^^^Exactly!!^^^^

@jupigarmin
I think you've missed seeing Posts #173 & 174 above. You seem to have formatted it incorrectly, i.e. you didn't set it as 'non-bootable' if you used the settings shown in your pic in Post #167. Try to format it again with correct settings as shown in the pic behinds spoiler in #174. The problem of it not booting may be as simple as an inappropriate format as pointed out by Fa_Pitar.

The SD flash to copy regions hasn't worked. The files you've zipped above are the 2 files i put there (Ldr.bin & update.txt), there should have been 2 more new files created if the commands were read (last_id.bin & update.log).

Hi Butters,

First, the "bricking" of the Alpha happened BEFORE I formatted the drive, so, RMPREPusb.exe did not cause the problem.
Second, you are right, when formatting the drive, I followed the instructions from [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
Now, I repeated the formatting with the settings you mentioned, and it didn't worked. I repeated again with the inclusion of "Use 64hd/32sec if possible" as Fa_Piter suggested. Again nothing.
The device is still stuck on the "Connect" Mode, as before.
This one seems to be a very tough "brick"
Thanks for your patience.

Hi Fa_Piter,

Thanks for chiming in. I tried your suggestion, but, the situation did not improve at all.
I still wait for help.
Regards,

Well, it's difficult to know for sure that it made no difference because the device has Cure firmware loaded and cure fw isn't meant to boot in fact it's intentionally made so it doesn't boot the device fully.

Knowing that the Alpha can't read from the card isn't totally unexpected however given what's happened to it. It simply isn't getting far enough into the boot process to execute Ldr.bin in the 1562 folder.

Let's try with a modified boot.bin as RGN flashed in preboot to run the txt commands:

• Remove Ldr.bin from the 1562 folder of the microSD card (very important), leave only Update.txt file in the 1562 folder.
• Insert the card into the Alpha and ensure it's off with the battery charged.
• Behind the spoiler below is 156201000300.zip, extract it to find 156201000300.rgn and save it somewhere convenient on your PC, the desktop is fine.
• Open the RGN in Updater.exe and leave it's GUI open and visible with the radio button next to 'USB Device' enabled.
• Plug a 'known-good' USB cable directly into a rear USB2 port of the PC. Put Alpha in preboot and immediately connect the USB cable to it and when you see the device details in GUI's window very quickly press 'OK' or just hit 'Enter' key on PC's keyboard.

When 'Loader' appears on screen you should be ok to release the button, or for safety hold it until the device tries to re-boot signalling the end of data transfer to the card. Hopefully it holds preboot long enough to initiate Update.txt.

Spoiler:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

This method doesn't rely on the device fw initiating to start Ldr.bin so it is more likely to work to dump region contents. Good luck!

Hi
I followed the instructions.
Everything went OK, including entering the preboot mode.
Then, when I pressed the OK button on the Updater.exe, the following message appears for couple of times.

Spoiler:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Then, after a couple of times, the following message appears. It appears that Updater.exe recognizes v3.2 of the fw in the device, and asks if I want to put an older version instead.

Spoiler:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

When I press Yes, within miliseconds, the picture below appears, and it shows the bar to be full 100%. In the meantime, the screen on the device, first goes OFF, then shows LOADER text.

Spoiler:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Then, the next message appears saying that the update was successful, all the while, the screen still shows LOADER text, and is stuck on that. I remove the USB cable, and it still continues to show LOADER text. When I press the OFF button, the screen goes black (NOT OFF), and then goes off. If I press OK, the Updater.exe turns itself OFF, but, the screen on the device continues to show the LOADER text.

Spoiler:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

When I allowed the device to connect to the PC, I found out that only 48 .bin files have been copied to the SD Card. All but 9 of them are “empty” (0 KB). Those 9 are of different size in KB. The file named 48.bin is the biggest, but its size changes with every attempt as Updater.exe tries to write to disk.
So, I decided to leave the device connected to Updater.exe even as the message reads that the update was successful, and even though Updater.exe has shot itself OFF. I am waiting for the LOADER text to disappear and/or something else happens to the screen for over 20 minutes now, and nothing new is happening.
The Update.txt file shows there are 255 .bin files to be copied, so, I decided to leave the device, and get back to it after a while. I will update afterwards.
Thanks for your patience.

Recording 48.bin can be very time consuming. I would advise you to wait at least an hour. Maybe longer.

Some devices write quite slowly to the card, Fa_Piter has had more experience than me with outdoor/tracking Garmins so take his advice. Keep in mind that when dumping a populated region even blank space is read so in the case of region 48 it's a lengthy process (that's the entire visible file system allocated space, aka it's internal flash memory which might be 2 gigabytes) Maybe if you more fully understand this particular process we're undertaking, what you've reported in Post #177 will then make more sense to you:

• We're using Updater.exe only to initiate the text commands on the sd card, so once the flashing starts ("Loader" on device screen) the communication is between the device and card directly.
• Updater initially reported "The Garmin device is not responding ....", which means the Alpha had already exited preboot simply because you had not been quick enough to click 'Ok' (you may have only a very brief opportunity to do that).
• It reports the version software difference as a normal feature, you'd told me you used V3.00 to make the cure fw but it seems you used V3.20 (that's of no great concern but i can remake the RGN file with V3.20 to eliminate that message if it repeats ongoing and delays starting the text commands).
• Just leave it undisturbed while 'Loader' shows on it's screen, don't disconnected from PC because even though Updater.exe's task is finished, the USB cable can keep supplying power in case of a weak battery.
• Nowhere near all possible 255 regions are populated and some won't even exist on that device, others may exist but will still dump empty BIN files like you've seen. Those regions are not of interest provided the results are expected. The main ones which may give the secret of what's happened to this device are regions 14, 41 and 48 most likely so their contents are best known ongoing, but i'll like to see what else is dumped.

Old Chinese proverb (allegedly): "Softy softly catches monkey". I'm intentionally taking this slowly so as not to do further harm to an already quite tortured device. Actually, likely conventional advice would be to just fix region 14 by overwriting it with a healthy fw_all.bin and if that didn't work to then completely erase regions 48 and 41. I think it will likely come to one, more or all of those, but i'd rather know what's in all the operable regions beforehand.

Hi @Butters

I left the device connected overnight and up until now (so, it's been 18 hours).
I removed the USB cable. The screen still showed Loader Text. I had to press the OFF button for a while (over three seconds), and the screen went black. I had to press again to turn it off (it went off immediately).

I connected the device to PC, and now, it shows 62 bin files. The previous files have not changed. The 48.bin is 3.781.632 KB, and the "new" ones (49 through 62) are ALL zero bytes.
I didn't initiate a new try with Updater.exe without first consulting you, because I knew it will rewrite the 48.bin file, thus nullifying what we already did.

And, yes - the screen is still in Connect Mode.

Please advise further action.
Regards,

Please put the 14.bin and 41.bin files into a folder (name it anything, "bins" will do) then compress the folder into a ZIP or RAR file to attach in your post.