When a box gets bricked?

Sometimes it happens that a box gets bricked. It happened to me when I had a Cloud iBox 3 and I had to JTAG it and put in a new Bootloader and a new image again. It got bricked when a power failure occurred during the boot process.

Can the same happen to the new modern boxes with Broadcom or Hisilicon chips and ARM processors? Are they fool proof or do they get bricked as well? I mean, are they safe for all newbies like most of us? If it does happen, what do we do? Do we have to JTAG them as we did with the Cloud iBox, and how is that done today? The Cloud iBox had a conventional RS232 port and the box had to be opened in order to reach the mother board to JTAG it. I can’t see any conventional RS232 ports on the new boxes and do not know if they are possible to JTAG. How knows?

I have seen the specifications for one box (the Octagonsf8008) with something they call RS232 but it does not look like the older more normal nine pin RS232 ports so I’m not sure how to use it. It shall to be used for maintenance (wartung) and service whatever that means. I looked for the cable to fit it and it is almost impossible to find with USB in the other end.

I found a USB to TTL Serial Adapter Converter Cable on amazon with 3.3 volt which could be the right one? Does anyone know what can be done with that port for maintenance and service and how it is done, not only seen from the outside but also from inside the box?

Some people say they can make a cable by themselves by taking the signal (3 wires) from a conventional RS232 port and connect them to the plug, but I think that can become a serious problem if the voltage is wrong. It all depends on what the port is to be used for and how it is connected inside the box USART or RS232.

I sincerely hope there is someone out there on the forum that can enlighten me.

We have two iBox 3. We bought them when they came on the market so they are pretty old now. Booth we had to JTAG and put in a better bootloader and we made a special contact on the motherboards to make it easier to JTAG. We made JTAG working on both Windows XP, Vista and Win7.

It happens that a box crashes sometimes but 100 times a day as KiddaC says seems to be too much. If it does, it is only to restart it again, it always works. If it gets stuck during the boot procedure then it might be a difficult problem, it might be bricked but it does not have to be.

Yesterday when I tried to start an iBox I hadn't used for a long time this happened. No led was on, no boot and no load showed up on the iBox screen. After a while I switch it off and tried again with the same result. I tried to flash a new image from USB with only one usb connection on. It flashed and after restarting it got stuck during boot process. On the led screen I could see BOOT but it never went to Load. It was stuck and the solution was probably to JTAG. But this time I was wrong!

I had a hub with a WiFi stick and a 64 gigabyte USB stick as HDD connected to the USB port on the back. The hub also had its own power supply. It was the same hub I had used before to another iBox3. For some reason, I don't know why, this was a too heavy load for the USB port on this iBox3 and probably lowered the voltage so much that the box could not load the image and stopped during the boot process.

I disconnected the hub and inserted the USB-HDD stick into the USB port on the backside and the WiFi stick on the right side USB port. After restarting it all worked nicely.

Later I connected both the WiFi and the USB memory stick to a new hub connected to the backside USB port. It works. For one of the two iBoxes the old hub was a too heavy load, maybe that box is not reliable any more. It is not only people that get old and weak, it probably goes for STB too.

The reason I started to thread was to know if someone had the knowledge of how to JTAG newer versions of boxes and if it was necessary. Are they safer than the older ones? Of course they should never be switched off during boot procedure but sometime an accident happens. It is the easiest way to brick them. On some boxes (octagon sf8008) they say there is a knob for factory reset, I am still wondering what that is good for and what it does do?

If any else has any experience of the new boxes and what to do if they get bricked, please enlighten me.

Thanks for all good advices!