RESOLVED: Have I killed my Seagate Dockstar?

[sweh]

I apply power and I see the LED on my USB stick flash once; I see the ethernet switch port light up.

But that's it.

So I got a serial cable. Tested with a "brand new, just out of the box" and I see boot messages. At least that means I got the cable pinouts correct

But when I try with the hacked Dockstar I don't even get the initial uBoot message; it just sits there totally silent. No activity at all.

(I don't have a JTAG and my hardware skills are stretched to the limit of getting the serial cable to work )

Have I killed it?

[peaslaker]

Yes. You have killed it. Nothing on serial means it doesn#t even get to the bootloader.

JTAG only recovery which isn't necessarily too difficult. Talk you through it if you really think too difficult.

[sweh]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peaslaker', 'Y')es. You have killed it. Nothing on serial means it doesn#t even get to the bootloader.

JTAG only recovery which isn't necessarily too difficult. Talk you through it if you really think too difficult.

[sweh]

Well, apparently I over-estimate my own skills!

I bought a TAIO Wiggler Universal TAG.

I wired it up, as per Mr Bill's page

I built a brand-new Ubuntu 10.10 install (I've only got 1 PC with a parallel port!) and installed openocd.

I copied dockstar.cfg to /usr/share/openocd/scripts/board/dockstar.cfg

As root,
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# openocd -f board/dockstar.cfg
Open On-Chip Debugger 0.4.0 (2010-10-08-15:42)
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
http://openocd.berlios.de/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
parport port = 0x378
trst_and_srst separate srst_gates_jtag trst_push_pull srst_open_drain
jtag_nsrst_delay: 200
jtag_ntrst_delay: 200
Warn : use 'feroceon.cpu' as target identifier, not '0'
Info : clock speed 500 kHz
Info : JTAG tap: feroceon.cpu tap/device found: 0x20a023d3 (mfg: 0x1e9, part: 0x0a02, ver: 0x2)
Info : Embedded ICE version 0
Info : feroceon.cpu: hardware has 1 breakpoint/watchpoint unit')

First question; is the warning about "Warn : use 'feroceon.cpu' as target identifier, not '0'" important? I'm assuming not.

It looks, to me... I think.

So I attempt to connect using telnet. It starts off OK but then...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '$ telnet localhost 4444
Trying ::1...
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Open On-Chip Debugger
> init
> sheevaplug_init
target state: halted
target halted in Thumb state due to debug-request, current mode: Supervisor
cpsr: 0x400000f3 pc: 0xffff0a42
MMU: enabled, D-Cache: enabled, I-Cache: enabled
> nand probe 0
unknown NAND flash device found, manufacturer id: 0x00 device id: 0x00
probing failed for NAND flash device
>')
Did the halt work properly? Clearly the "nand probe" has failed.

I also attempted to use the dlc5 'halt while holding down reset' in desperation. But that didn't work either.

So I'm stuck! I've tried multiple times and, I either get "timeout in halt" errors (in which case I disconnect everything, powercycle the Dockstar and the adapter, plug it back in again) or else I get the same sort of response.

Umm...

Help, please?!

[sweh]

Wow, I think I managed to recover !

I'm not sure if what I did was sensible or correct ("that's not right; that's not even wrong!") but it seems to work.

The problem, as noted elsewhere, is that the dockstar doesn't appear to "reset" sufficiently to allow NAND access.

What I found worked, mostly, for me, was to plug the orange wire into pin 7. This causes the dockstar to immediate reset. At this point type 'halt' into OCD. You'll get timeouts 'cos the dockstar is stuck in reset. Disconnect the orange wire. Now "halt", "init", "sheevaplug_init" and then "nand probe 0" should work.

At this point I used the process to recover uboot.

This got me a booting uboot, but in my messing around I must have destroyed the kernel and root, so then I followed the reflashing process.

And, umm, it seems to work. At least it's booting into the original pogoplug environment, which is good! And, yes, I plug a disk in and it shows up on pogoplug.

Woot!

Gotta thank all those people who have written the documentation. I know the problems I came across were mostly of my making (hardware, not my forte!) but I'm happy to have been able to recover this from death.