Atari Flashback 9 AR3050 Bricked, Help, Please

[lamasutra]

Hi,
I have somehow managed to brick this.
I have prepared SD card for update. Downloaded official firmware by registering serial number. I have prepared 4GB FAT32 partision on 32GB microsd with gparted on my ubuntu platform.
I have inserted flash card, booted, selected update by left triggering an option. Suddenly screen went off, restarted and system never came back. Maybe I was too eager to wait or something went off.

I have opened the box scrapping the warranty, but all I found is just flashback gold (ar3560) pcb without bluetooth circuit. The microusb has stripped data links, so no connections to SoC by USB. I have not found any uart RX/TX traces for debugging purpouses.
I'm curious, how are these bare pcbs are flashed or checked by manufacturer.
I don't want to trash that pcb. There must be a way how to make some checks and restore it using update image.

Maybe connecting those usb data traces will connect it to my pc and the "reset" button will prepare it for rkflashtool, but it's maybe. So far I'm playing myself "you are such an idiot"
Any advises ?

[rmr_md]

I don't have any Atari Flashback, but I assume the board is similar to the Genesis Flashback HD 2018, so you can take a look at the screenshot in this thread from another forum.

 

If anyone has a backup from this device it would be easy to reflash/recover with Android Tool.

[lamasutra]

Hi, I have managed to connect usb traces and now I'm able to flash, but lack working dumps.
Weird thing is, I don't need to press recovery button to be able to flash. Is it stuck in some mode (idVendor=2207, idProduct=301a)?
Can someone make full dump with rkflashtool ?
Thank you for help.

[lamasutra]

I have found UART TX pad, and serial console provided some info.

It cannot read kernel.

If someone have backup or can make one, please contact me. It seems, more people encountered problems with firmware update.

ar3050-serial.dump.txt

[lamasutra]

I have made some progress.
I have found, that my rootfs and kernel partitions were corrupted. I tried some backup from sega system, which used same rk3036 cpu. It booted up to the menu, but only fire button on joystick is working.
Maybe kernel has special driver for atari joysticks. Can someone confirm that ?

[pimpmaul69]

5 minutes ago, lamasutra said:

I have made some progress.
I have found, that my rootfs and kernel partitions were corrupted. I tried some backup from sega system, which used same rk3036 cpu. It booted up to the menu, but only fire button on joystick is working.
Maybe kernel has special driver for atari joysticks. Can someone confirm that ?

Well now that you did this can you flash the firmware for the atari fb 9 from sd card slot? The reason the fire button and joystick work is because they are the same pinout on a sega genesis. The other buttons on the atari fb p1 joystick are not common to anything else. 

[lamasutra]

No, joysticks are not responding in upgrade menu too. Only firebutton is working in game menu. I have successfully launched first game.
It's obvious I need proper kernel.img and rootfs.img. It looks like there are some differences between sega and atari.

At least I know, that unit is not lost at all.
Please, can someone dump kernel and rootfs from Atari Flashback 9 HD ?

[lamasutra]

I have repaired atari squashfs rootfs. Unsquashed it, copied missing files using mounted sega rootfs and resquashed. There was libMali.so, two oder libs and some .h files unreadable.
Now it boots with atari rootfs, but joysticks are still not functional. Kernel must have a special driver for atari ports builtin.
 

[MrFister]

@lamasutra

Can you share the points to where you soldered?

 

[Draxxon]

this is the sgfb