Ambit120 keeps rebooting !!!!!

[mark370]

hi guys , ime after a little bit of help here with a Ambit120 , and before some one says dont bother there not worth it ,i no but its little project of mine ive been doing and ive got this far so i want to finish it off.

cut a long story short , the first time i tryed to get this modded , using blackat i flashed [iamhims] 2meg dump to the flash tab instead of sending it by tftp and of coarse this knacked things up , after that blackat would detect the bcm but would not detect the flash and i could'nt get no text at all in hyper/t so i put it in the cuboard out the way.

then the other day i thought i would try and get a bootloader on it , after reading the data sheet i found a way of reseting the flash chip and now it connects and detects the bcm & flash with blackat so i wrote bootloader on it fired up hyper/t and sent the 2meg dump with TFTP and all went ok , set my area settings and mac.
but the problem is now its in a reset loop the modem just keeps rebooting itself , classic symtems of same mac on UBR ,but i no its not because of mac because ive changed it with my own and it still does it.
after watching it reboot in hyper/t when i put settings in it saves them but soon as it reboots it looses the area settings , but strangley it keeps the downstreem freq.

the ip its giving me starts with 169.ect,ect

so if any one has any constructive thoughts on this that could help me out i would like to hear them.

many thanks

PS if any more info is needed please tell me ?

EDIT just thought ide add , i carnt access the 192.168.100.1 page even with a static ip.

 

[gentlex]

the ip its giving me starts with 169.ect,ect

so if any one has any constructive thoughts on this that could help me out i would like to hear them.

many thanks

PS if any more info is needed please tell me wot ?

169 ip usaully means problem with ur network card

 

[mark370]

169 ip usaully means problem with ur network card

yea the network card is ok m8 it works fine with other modems , but yea ive just been reading that 169 ip meens no comunication between pc and modem.

 

[iamhim]

yea, theres no communication going on here otherwise you'd have been assigned a LAN ip followed by a WAN ip.

im guessing you're trying all of this without applying the updated NTL firmware, could you possibly show me a terminal log of whats going on when you bootup?


ImH.




btw: A120 works fine, anyone who says they are not worth it is ungrateful and/or lazy... if it was the only modem working you'd all be diving at me for help modding it.

 

[mark370]

iamhim hi m8 , i was hoping you would see this post , ill connect it back up in the morning and post a log of hyper/t for you to look at , and hopefully we might be able to sort this out.

thanks alot m8.

 

[mark370]

yea, theres no communication going on here otherwise you'd have been assigned a LAN ip followed by a WAN ip.

im guessing you're trying all of this without applying the updated NTL firmware, could you possibly show me a terminal log of whats going on when you bootup?


ImH.




btw: A120 works fine, anyone who says they are not worth it is ungrateful and/or lazy... if it was the only modem working you'd all be diving at me for help modding it.

here you go m8 a full log from start to finish.
and this is the guide ive been following grantys update ove your guide , btw ive tryed your guide and carnt get the the TFTPUdate to work.

thanks for the help.

 

[iamhim]

hi again, i've been quite busy recently so please forgive my late reply.

hmm, it looks fine until the first reboot, but it would seem some stored values are corrupt:

BCM3345 Ambit
S12ce7865Detect ST M29W160DB Flash
Small Block checksum error


and then it looks like the firmware wants to reboot, after which you get this:


This board's Ethernet hardware address is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
This board's USB Interface hardware address is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF



how exactly are you doing all of this???

* flashing the bootloader on and then using TFTP to transfer the full dump?
* flashing the full dump through the blackcat software WRITEALL???

if its the 2nd one, i suspect some bytes are being written incorrectly and the firmware is interpreting some values incorrectly and thus rebooting.

if this is the case then the remedy is either a more stable blackcat connection when you're flashing, or use the bootloader / TFTP method... i made the TFTP Update program to help this process along, you need .NET framework v2 before it will work.




.............


the updated guide seems ok, even clearer than i described originally, im not keen on the soldering on the back part though, that just seems wierd.

why even solder a pin header onto the board? i personally prefer to do them with solid core wire now, its just easier because you only have to touch the solder point and the wire jumps straight through, no messing around, check out the attatchment to see what i mean.

.............

oh yea btw, can you also mention which type of JTAG you're using?

* TCNiSO one cable JTAG (blackcat)
* chip version with added USB for power
* non chip version thats one wire


thanks, ImH.

 

[mark370]

thanks for the reply , right ive tryed flashing both ways , the first time i tryed to put bootloader on with Sk & write all [offset 32768] and it didnt work right it flashed it in about 1sec , so because i couldnt get the [press 1/2 or press p for default] in hyper/t , i did try and just put the full dump through the blackcat software WRITEALL , but after doing that i couldnt get it to talk in hyper/t , couldnt get any text,
then after reading i found out i had to patch the SK software with flashpi.dll because ive got the st M29W160 in my A120.
after messing with diff power suply i finally got Sk to detect the flash then i just followed granty updated tut ,and it still wouldnt work but i noticed on the MEM tab in Sk it was all FFFFF & 00000 so i got a mate to do a 8meg & 2meg dump of his A120 and flashed mine with it , the MEM looks ok now but ime still at this stage.

BTW i did this with a buffered blackat cable and the wires are solid core soldered to the ambit board , i can never get good connection with the pin header & plug.

ive tryed your tftp update program and i can never get any text scrolling and i have .NET framework v2 installed ect,ect.

 

[iamhim]

dont flash to offset 32768, that number is the size of the bootloader, you should flash to offset 0 as that is the begining of the flash, 32768 should be the number of bytes to flash.

im not sure what you mean about patching SK, i've never had to do that and i've used a few different versions of it on various different flash chips with nps.


the text will only scroll if RS232 terminal text is detected, in order for that to happen you need to open the port on the first page of the program and then reset the modem, at this point the bootloader spits out the "press 1, 2 or P" line, this is what the program is looking for so you'll need to flash the bootloader on first.

 

[mark370]

ok mate thanks for the explantion i will have another go at it tomorrow and let you no the out-come.

many-thanks for your help.