Hi guys,
I have had a working Kobo mini for a few years and I love it. It's been mostly collecting dust but I decided to try loading a few new books on it and connected it to my macbook - it was working fine then. The app complained that it needed to be updated, then the firmware.. I do both, somehow something happens (likely pulled usb cable while working on something else) and the Kobo mini gets bricked.
original symptoms are: nothing comes up on screen, on power up LED flashes green blue green and nothing. Screen is blank.
I tried soft reset, hard reset (taking back off and using paperclip..) but nothing changes. I stumble upon this post detailing how to flash and unbrick the Mini's SD card.
Here are the steps I feel that MIGHT have messed up the reader/SD card:
- My SD card is 4GB and readable when I inserted it in my usb card reader - I was able to navigate it. After the flash computer complains that it cannot read that disk ("the disk inserted was not readable by this computer") which leads me to believe that I may have fuxxored the card flash...
- My serial # "sticker" inside the kobo is printed "(SL) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" which is quite a few extra #s than the "N705000000000" the flash post refers to - I entered the 17 'x' actual number (omitting (SL)) using HexFiend editor, it did push the Hex fields a few bytes down....I saved..
- I flashed the SD card using procedure described here... a 'diskutil list' showed the SD card reader as /dev/disk2 - I unmounted and did a 'sudo dd if=Desktop/KOBOMINI1.img of=/dev/disk2' command. 30 minutes later the 'cannot read disk' message was on screen. Could the flashing the entire reader have fuxxored the flash? (original post uses gparted to determine location, but I figure osx's diskutil list is even)
- Original flash post says that gparted is used to shorten the partition flash because he is trying a 2GB card - but mine was 4, like the image provided... I tried to fix the image using disk utility but it won't fix/firstaid anything, even when pulling the image from disk... (step 7 in here)
- I put the card back in the Kobo and no LED powering up at all. Even after hard reset.
- I tried charging the kobo for a few hours, try to redo procedure.. same. No green or blue LED. surprisingly, this morning, I tried powering it up without the SD card in and I got a blue LED signal.
- Because of no LED and tinkering with the Kobo with it's back open, there might have been a few times where the SD card was loaded in/out without device being properly shut off. I hope I didn't damage anything.
Clues? Suggestions?
I have had a working Kobo mini for a few years and I love it. It's been mostly collecting dust but I decided to try loading a few new books on it and connected it to my macbook - it was working fine then. The app complained that it needed to be updated, then the firmware.. I do both, somehow something happens (likely pulled usb cable while working on something else) and the Kobo mini gets bricked.
original symptoms are: nothing comes up on screen, on power up LED flashes green blue green and nothing. Screen is blank.
I tried soft reset, hard reset (taking back off and using paperclip..) but nothing changes. I stumble upon this post detailing how to flash and unbrick the Mini's SD card.
Here are the steps I feel that MIGHT have messed up the reader/SD card:
- My SD card is 4GB and readable when I inserted it in my usb card reader - I was able to navigate it. After the flash computer complains that it cannot read that disk ("the disk inserted was not readable by this computer") which leads me to believe that I may have fuxxored the card flash...
- My serial # "sticker" inside the kobo is printed "(SL) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" which is quite a few extra #s than the "N705000000000" the flash post refers to - I entered the 17 'x' actual number (omitting (SL)) using HexFiend editor, it did push the Hex fields a few bytes down....I saved..
- I flashed the SD card using procedure described here... a 'diskutil list' showed the SD card reader as /dev/disk2 - I unmounted and did a 'sudo dd if=Desktop/KOBOMINI1.img of=/dev/disk2' command. 30 minutes later the 'cannot read disk' message was on screen. Could the flashing the entire reader have fuxxored the flash? (original post uses gparted to determine location, but I figure osx's diskutil list is even)
- Original flash post says that gparted is used to shorten the partition flash because he is trying a 2GB card - but mine was 4, like the image provided... I tried to fix the image using disk utility but it won't fix/firstaid anything, even when pulling the image from disk... (step 7 in here)
- I put the card back in the Kobo and no LED powering up at all. Even after hard reset.
- I tried charging the kobo for a few hours, try to redo procedure.. same. No green or blue LED. surprisingly, this morning, I tried powering it up without the SD card in and I got a blue LED signal.
- Because of no LED and tinkering with the Kobo with it's back open, there might have been a few times where the SD card was loaded in/out without device being properly shut off. I hope I didn't damage anything.
Clues? Suggestions?