Triangle of Death?

[Joe McPlumber]

My G1 was running CM6 and it was somewhat unstable, occasionally slowing to a crawl and/or spontaneously rebooting. After one such reboot it got stuck in a boot loop and then stuck at the "G1" and wouldn't boot to recovery. The consensus on the Interweb seemed to be that when stuff like this happens the best thing to do is start over. It didn't bother me because my contacts are all synced and my apps are backed up.

Since my phone was essentially unusable i considered it "bricked" and began by following the instructions here:
Unbrick - android-roms - How To: Recover your G1 from a bring Bricked. - Project Hosting on Google Code

That's as far as i got.

After the flash finished my phone booted to a triangle with an exclamation point in the center and exhibits the following behaviors or lack thereof:

- The first thing the recovery screen says is "E:Can't open /cache/recovery/command"
- I've forgotten all the various things i've tried but most any update.zip has failed with an error like "No signature Validation Failed".
- Alt+W doesn't do anything, nor does the phone reboot from pressing Home+Back
- Neither ADB nor FastBoot recognize the device. Prior to this crash both worked, USB drivers recognized the SD card and i used the phone for tethering. Windows does recognize a drive when the phone is plugged in but of course it thinks there's nothing on it.

I'm just wildly guessing but my wild guess is that i shouldnt have flashed that particular firmware on a rooted phone. But please, before anyone jumps my case for doing the wrong thing, i bought this phone modded and was in the process of learning as much as i could do. Only the right thing to do isn't always apparent from Google because people have done so very many things to this phone. I've since followed all the precautions i know of, such as validating my downloads, formatting the SD card FAT32, safely ejecting same, and so on.

All i need is some sort of start, like a working recovery or /any/ working OS and i will take it from there.

I have access to a Mac if it would help matters.

Thanks,
- joe

 

[jcdrepair]

I'm sure you did this but just to make sure...

1) Used an external card reader to format your SD card to Fat32 (since your phone is bricked I assume you can't do it from the phone).

2) Copy DREAIMG.nbh (RC29 version) onto the SD card (again, using the external reader).

3) Put the SD card back in your G1.

4) Pull the battery on your G1, wait a few seconds and then put it back in.

5) Hold the camera and power button until you get the boot screen.

I've rooted several G1's and no matter what problem I've encountered during the process, those 5 steps reset things back to RC29 and then I can update with whatever images I want.

 

[Joe McPlumber]

...those 5 steps reset things back to RC29 and then I can update with whatever images I want.

That's what i was doing when the phone died. The camera button doesn't help because no matter which buttons i push it only ever boots to this triangle. I'm pretty much limited to flashing update.zips.

Which, i should mention, in a desperate attempt to make my phone go i have also tried various T-Mobile updates. The console says that the updates were successful but then the phone boots back to the triangle.

Thanks
- joe

 

[Smokexz]

Couldn't you just boot into recovery and put in a zip from a stock ROM? Or do it from ADB?

Sent from my Xoom

 

[Joe McPlumber]

That's what i meant when i said "i have also tried various T-Mobile updates", i.e. official signed zips seem to install fine but then i just end up back to the triangle.

I do not have ADB access i wish i did.

I went out and bought an HD2 so it's not critical anymore but damn i miss my G1 it's kind like an old friend.

- joe