Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

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jwhitmore
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Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by jwhitmore »

I'm having huge problems with my taranis X9D+ but I should outline how I got to where I am.

I sort of followed the linux build instructions for OpenTX 2.2 https://github.com/opentx/opentx/wiki/O ... structions I say sort of because I was having difficulty on my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed distro. There's a package of arm-none cross compiler but it doesn't include g++ so I could not build the firmware, but I did get companion22 build.

So I used Companion22 to download and install the latest firmware opentx-x9d+-eu-en-2.2.1.bin to the radio. That worked out and the radio was fine but did give me an error when powered on because the contents of the SD card were of an unexpected version. I tried to clear that error message by downloading the contents of the SD Card and putting them onto a freshly formatted SD Card.

That last step of updating the contents of the SD Card have caused me a world of pain. Either I don't get passed the splash screen. Or I have what I've got at present where the power button does not turn on the radio. I can push the two trim buttons together and turn it on to get to the boot loader but the firmware is not booting.

So is there a way I can rescue this? Can I plug in a serial cable and get debug out of the radio?

I'd be very grateful for any help

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MikeB
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by MikeB »

Try removing the SD card and starting the radio normally.
How did you format the SD card? It is best to use the SDFormatter program as that formats with a 32K cluster size, which works best.

Mike
erskyTx/er9x developer
The difficult we do immediately,
The impossible takes a little longer!
jwhitmore
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by jwhitmore »

Thank you for the advice but no cigar I'm afraid. I've reformatted an SD card with Linux command "sudo mkdosfs /dev/mmcblk0p1 -s 64 -F 32" to give me the 32K Cluster, (I think) Copied the files to that SD Card from the latest online sdcard-taranis-x9-2.2V0013.zip

If I install that SD Card into the Transmitter and power up I get the voice and the warning that no failsafe is set. Once I clear that, by pressing a key, the screen just continually clicks at me. If I try without the SD Card I get the same result but with no voice this time. Failsafe warning then clicks.

Because I can't build on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed I'll move to an Ubuntu VM build there with debug, if I find the build options, and try to install that and use a serial cable hooked into the back of the radio. It's all I can think of at this point.
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MikeB
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by MikeB »

OK, one more thing to try. Start in bootloader mode, then use Companion to read and save the EEPROM. Now use Companion to create a new EEPROM and write this to the radio, then see if it will start.

Mike
erskyTx/er9x developer
The difficult we do immediately,
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Kilrah
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by Kilrah »

How did you flash and what's the bootloader version?

jwhitmore
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by jwhitmore »

Oops, or oh sh1t!!! It's been a while since I'd flashed firmware so of course I did it wrong! I had the X9D+ turned on when I used companion22 to flash the latest firmware.

Now of course when I try to flash with the X9D+ turned off there is no compatible dfu-util device is connected. :(

So how to overcome this problem. I'll have to do a search to see if I can open the device and if there's a JTAG connector flash it with a J-Link

Sorry for wasting people's time I guess.
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MikeB
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by MikeB »

Does the radio not start in bootloader mode (power on with horizontal trims held inwards)?

If you plug the USB cable in with the radio powered off, do you get anything appearing as a device on the computer? You shouldn't need to search for the JTAG connector to flash the chip, the USB DFU bootloader is in ROM in the processor and should always be available.

Mike
erskyTx/er9x developer
The difficult we do immediately,
The impossible takes a little longer!
jwhitmore
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by jwhitmore »

Thanks Mike that's great news that the bootloader is in ROM. It wasn't powering up in bootloader, or giving me anything on the computer when the USB was plugged in, but I'm hoping that is down to a battery which has been flattened by all the activity. I'm charging it up to see what it gives me then. I'll let you know
jwhitmore
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by jwhitmore »

So I fully charged the battery and there wasn't a peep out of the radio. Neither in Bootloader mode or just turning it on. I thought it as totally bricked with no activity on the screen nor any activity on the USB Interface to the computer. So I had to go do something and came back to it after an hour and it's booted into the bootloader screen, better yet there was activity on the USB so I managed to flash the latest firmware.

Thanks for all your help! My Stupidity in flashing to a radio in bootloader mode. There should be a check in companion for that.

Thanks again.
ThompsonJim
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by ThompsonJim »

jwhitmore wrote: Wed Jun 27, 2018 2:04 pm ................................My Stupidity in flashing to a radio in bootloader mode. There should be a check in companion for that.
Thanks again.
Can someone please explain the full details of the above for me?
I have a new Taranis coming in the mail. I am totally new to Taranis; however, I have read a fair bit of the thread on rcgroups. Sadly, I understood very little of it.
One more quick question:
Why would I bother to update my new transmitter software before using it?
Especially after reading of this thread and others like it. Updating appears to come with certain hazards.
I will have simple model set ups; the most complex will be a 6 servo glider and a 6/8 servo internal combustion powered tug plane.
Currently, these models are being flown with my primitive, and at times, frustrating Futaba 8U tx.
I am not in the least interested in frills and whistles etc.

Jim.
jtaylor
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by jtaylor »

ThompsonJim wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:51 am
jwhitmore wrote: Wed Jun 27, 2018 2:04 pm ................................My Stupidity in flashing to a radio in bootloader mode. There should be a check in companion for that.
Thanks again.
Can someone please explain the full details of the above for me?
I don't think anybody except the the poster of that statement can explain it because there is nothing wrong with flashing to a radio in bootloader mode (assuming you flash the right thing) and (the current) Companion already checks that you are flashing compatible firmware.

Nobody can tell you why you would bother to update firmware on a new transmitter. New versions of firmware add support for new radios, add features, and fix bugs. Only you can decide if any of that is important to you. Read the release notes to see what new features were added and what bugs were fixed and make your own decision.

As to the hazards of updating: Thousands of people update firmware with no problem. A few have problems. Many, if not most, of the people that have problems create them themselves by not following the instructions or watching and following old outdated YouTube videos. People that have no problems generally do not post about it so you don't get a true picture. You see the posts of the very few people that have problems and not the thousands that don't.

Seeing your other post about not being able to install Companion in an old Mint version it may be academic because you need Companion to upgrade firmware (unless you compile yourself) so unless you solve that problem you won't be able to upgrade it anyway.

Jim
ThompsonJim
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Re: Half bricked my Taranis X9D plus?

Post by ThompsonJim »

Jim,
......................... Read the release notes to see what new features were added and what bugs were fixed and make your own decision.
Ok, I understand. Will do so.
As to the hazards of updating: Thousands of people update firmware with no problem. A few have problems. ..............
That makes sense. The laws of probability etc. etc. Life itself is a risky business after all!
Seeing your other post about not being able to install Companion in an old Mint version it may be academic because you need Companion to upgrade firmware (unless you compile yourself) so unless you solve that problem you won't be able to upgrade it anyway.
Jim
I did read more about that; it appears that my almost out of date for support Linux 17.3 needs updating. It has been reported on another thread here that Mint 19 fixes the dependency problem when loading Companion.
I will update my OS; I already have the .iso file for Mint 18.3 downloaded. I will try that first on one of my computers.

Thanks,

Jim.

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