Hello folks,
I know this is probably an old board but I'm sure you can help me out. Some story about how can I got into this situation.
I started living in a rented apartment, and sure there was Amiko mini HD as a satellite box. Everything would be alright except, the tenants that were there living before me, locked all menus with code and forgot it :) So I could not change anything, so I decided to google (I have experience with some android tv boxes, etc.), found some unoriginal firmware developed by someone, downloaded it to USB, amiko detected it, successfully upgraded, and the lock on the menu disappeared. I was thinking everything should be okay for now, but how naive I was.
One evening when I was watching TV, Amiko prompted me, that it would be shut down automatically after 120s (preconfigured shutdown after 2 hours of inactivity), and when I tried to cancel it, or just press anything, that box froze. Nothing was working, etc. So I decided to pull out the power cord and after this, the amiko won't boot.
After plugging it into power, on the front there is a steady green light, I have working activity LEDs from the ethernet port, but that's it. Just a black box with a green light from the front :)
As I was googling a lot of people suggested trying reflashing it through RS232. However, I don't own the original cable jack to rs232, so I just soldered wires to the motherboard. Checked with a multimeter, connection to the serial cable was working. I think I tried everything I could find on the internet such as:
Tried: External RS232 to USB adapter on Win11
Tried this external and also internal port on a 2002 PC with Win XP
Tried this also on Win7, but nothing.
I tried programs such as "Make Alive my STB", "Upgrade Tool Version 2.0.0b", and "Toolbox for Amiko 3612". I can't flash anything, can't dump the firmware. I can't open a connection via PuTTY.
Tried crossover (Also known as "Null modem") and Straight connection RS232 cable, but nothing.
I even tried to move that little jumper located on board
Tried another 12V, 2.0A power supply,
I just feel like I tried everything, but nothing works
The process I use for flashing is to open some program, for example, Toolbox for amiko, set my com port, click next, and after a few seconds plug Amiko power adapter in (plugging in DC jack into Amiko). Maybe after 1/5 tries I notice, the Device Manager in Windows will detect something, refresh the Device Manager list, and then maybe after a 3-second it will update again, and then I get the excellent error message "Transfer data failed".
I know there is an opinion to desolder or try with spider clips to flash EEPROM memory but I'm not a very huge fan of this solution.
Also, I noticed there is a UART connection on the board. Is there a possible way to use this? Or at least diagnose this someway? There is no visible damage to any of the components on the motherboard. I think maybe some memory leak bugged the bootloader or OS, or there really could be some component on the board that just decided to stop working.
Do you have any ideas on how to fix this?
Thanks for your help
Me and my hair really appreciate it.
