Bricked my system - time to do weird things with it!

[mkidtrigun]

Not reading the fine print on one of the jailbreak updates (my bad), I ended up black screening my 500a device. It doesn't boot, but it still is detected on my VM of XP (which I was able to successfully get my 337 unit modded to 337aPRO), so while I sit and wait for a chance to get another second unit, I've decided to mess around with it and see what I can do with it!

So, first thing I tried is getting it reset back to 500a after messing it up initially. The bar slowly goes across the bottom and gets to about the edge of the Neo Geo Upgrade image and then black screens, not doing anything afterwards. 

The next thing I tried was to start the firmware update process and then eject the Mega Pack card once 'Neo Geo X' appears on the system - I get a "Game Card Fault" error message. So some of the programming is still on the device...

Next, I started the firmware update, got the Neo Geo X screen, flipped the power switch on, ripped the Rocket Cable out and tried to connect it to my computer/VM. While it was still in the Neo Geo X screen, the computer didn't recognize the JZ4770 USB device like I had hoped, but it did go to the "USB Connected" screen that you get when you regularly plug one in when it's turned on.

The last thing I'm attempting for the moment is that I've got the 500a upgrade running right now, but I turned on the power long enough to plug it into my VM, so now I'm waiting for the black screen to occur, I've got USBbootTool all set up to start the jailbreak firmware process again. 

My ProCard will arrive in the next few days, so I can try out the other ideas I have to get it up and running again. Here's hoping I don't have to make a Linux VM and try to fix it in there!

[omgngx]

Sorry to hear about the brick. What jailbreak/method were you trying to flash? There are solder points on the motherboards of 370s where you can wire up your own internal micro SD (bypassing the soldered on NAND), that's gonna be your best shot at recovering it (then it'll be like a 337). If you did need another 370 I have new handheld/charger only bundles on sale for $90 right now.

[mkidtrigun]

 I don't trust myself to do any sort of soldering, but it's good to know that the device isn't completely useless. Are there any schematics posted on how to do this? The method I used to jailbreak it was the new one that you had posted,  the Rocket-Cableless one that worked just like the 337aPRO upgrade on the 337 units. I thank you for the offer, but I caved and picked up another used one off of eBay (boxed, complete)  for $126 shipped, should be in sometime next week. 

[Deleted]

Hi, what caused you to have the problem, did you disconnect during the update etc?

[omgngx]

Mar 6, 2014 17:44:50 GMT -5 mkidtrigun said:

 I don't trust myself to do any sort of soldering, but it's good to know that the device isn't completely useless. Are there any schematics posted on how to do this? The method I used to jailbreak it was the new one that you had posted,  the Rocket-Cableless one that worked just like the 337aPRO upgrade on the 337 units. I thank you for the offer, but I caved and picked up another used one off of eBay (boxed, complete)  for $126 shipped, should be in sometime next week. 

So 337aPRO flashed to a 370? Legacy has done this, I'm not that brave though... I recommend only flashing the 337s as you can always recover those.

[mkidtrigun]

Mar 7, 2014 10:37:41 GMT -5 omgngx said:

Mar 6, 2014 17:44:50 GMT -5 mkidtrigun said:

So 337aPRO flashed to a 370? Legacy has done this, I'm not that brave though... I recommend only flashing the 337s as you can always recover those.

Not exactly, let me try to sort things out.

I have two units total, a 337 model and a 370 model.

The 337 model, I followed the instructions on your site to modify the firmware to 337aPRO and it updated it successfully. 

The 370 model, I initially upgraded to 500a as to play my Mega Pack, then tried to do the same procedure as I did with the 337 model, swapping the 337aPRO img with the 345 Jailbreak No RocketCable img, and that's where the issues came into play.

When I did the firmware update with the 337, after the inital passthrough it rebooted the system and booted into 337aPRO with no issues. When I did it to the 500a with the Jailbreak, it wrote from 0 to 100% and took its time, but after it completed, it started to write to the system again. I thought it was weird, but I let it continue to write the firmware. It was around the time the second write finished and it began to write it a third time that I disconnected the unit, so it's very possible that me pulling it in the middle of the write cycle bricked the system.

I AM trying one last ditch effort, though. Because the system still can go to update mode, I'm currently trying out updating it via a ProCard w/ 2GB Micro SD Jailbreak method. I'll be sure to post whether or not I've brought this device back from the dead (or not if the case may be).

Yeah, no, it still didn't work out... but I did just discover 1 weird thing about it. For whatever reason, I'm trying the 500a upgrade again, but I decided not to hold down start before plugging in the rocket cable, and it's going through the update process... Is that supposed to happen?