I bricked my device, but then unbricked it

[vladchirila]

I would like to share my journey to troubleshooting and fixing an issue where I thought I just bricked my device. Maybe it will be useful to someone.

All this was one on a gen 1 device, but I'm sure the steps are probably similar for a gen 2 device.

When trying to follow the steps on the readme, instead of following the steps from Quickstart as I should have done, I tried to patch the partition on my own.
What's more, the Python scripts don't seem to completely work on Windows, and I ended up modifying them.
Long story short, trying to flash the boot partition with the patched version that I created left my device in a state where it seemed like nothing would work anymore. The touch screen was unresponsive, the power button was unresponsive, and this is what rkflashtool would tell me:

>rkflashtool p rkflashtool: info: rkflashtool v6.2 rkflashtool: info: Detected RK3026... rkflashtool: info: interface claimed rkflashtool: info: MASK ROM MODE rkflashtool: info: reading parameters at offset 0x00000000 rkflashtool: info: size: 0x00000000 rkflashtool: fatal: Write error! Disk full?

or this:

>rkflashtool n rkflashtool: info: rkflashtool v6.2 rkflashtool: info: Detected RK3026... rkflashtool: info: interface claimed rkflashtool: info: MASK ROM MODE rkflashtool: info: Flash ID: 00 00 00 00 00 rkflashtool: info: Flash Info: Manufacturer: Samsung (0) Flash Size: 0MB Block Size: 0KB Page Size: 0KB ECC Bits: 0 Access Time: 0 Flash CS:

Flashing also didn't work:

>rkflashtool w boot < boot-gen1-patched.img rkflashtool: info: rkflashtool v6.2 rkflashtool: info: Detected RK3026... rkflashtool: info: interface claimed rkflashtool: info: MASK ROM MODE rkflashtool: info: working with partition: boot rkflashtool: info: size of parameter block: 0 rkflashtool: fatal: 'mtdparts' not found in command line

As we can see, it looks like we can't see the partitions anymore. The blue LED was permanently on, and the device completely unresponsive, stuck in the MASKROM mode.
Searching online and asking AI, it seems that my device was not dead - but the NAND flash controller and RAM were not initialised. The solution would then mean to find a loader binary suitable for my device, run that first, and then hope that everything works from there. To do that, I used rkdeveloptool. You can find the Windows version of it here.

1. List the device, ensure it is in maskrom mode (if not, follow these steps):

rkdeveloptool.exe ld

The output should tell you explicitly that you are in MASKROM mode.

2. Install this loader. I know it says this is for RK3028A, but our device is RK3026. That .bin file originally comes from here. As you can see there, the author seems unsure if this is for RK3026 or RK3028. I'm unsure either, but it seems to work for me. If you have any better ones, I would be glad to hear about it.

rkdeveloptool.exe db "C:\Users\user\Downloads\StoryTel\RK3028ALoader(L)_V2.05.bin"

Make sure this step succeeded! If it didn't, you might need to find a more suitable loader. The good news is, if it fails it won't make your situation worse. It should just leave your device in the state it currently already was.

3. Now, one problem I had was that I could not see partitions and their offsets. This meant that, for me to patch the boot partition, I needed to know the offset where to start writing from. Luckily, the offsets for me seemed to match perfectly with the offsets from here, so I was able to use that to get the offset for the boot partition.
   Before running this, ensure this is the boot-gen1-patched.img from Quickstart, and not another img file!

rkdeveloptool.exe wl 0x8000 "C:\Projects\boot-gen1-patched.img"

5. Then restart the device, it should not be in Maskrom anymore it should be responsive, and it should have new patched boot flashed on it. From there, just follow the recipes. As my personal preferences, as a launcher I used Simple Ink Launcher, and as a reader I used ReadEra.

rkdeveloptool.exe rd

Voila!

[ntherning]

I'm pleased to hear that you managed to unbrick your device! Thanks for sharing!