Unbrick: Ingenic

Use this page for Ingenic T31 devices where the bootloader in flash is broken and the board can boot from SD card.

Boot Behavior

The OpenIPC wiki notes that if T31 fails to boot U-Boot from flash, it can try to boot from SD card. This makes SD-card recovery possible when the flash bootloader is broken.

The U-Boot image must be built for SD-card boot. Do not use a normal flash-boot U-Boot file for this procedure.

Build U-Boot for SD Boot

Example setup from the wiki:

mkdir /opt/openipc
cd /opt/openipc
git clone https://github.com/Dafang-Hacks/mips-gcc472-glibc216-64bit.git
git clone https://github.com/OpenIPC/u-boot-ingenic.git
export PATH="$PATH:/opt/openipc/mips-gcc472-glibc216-64bit/bin"
cd u-boot-ingenic
make distclean

Choose the final build command for the exact T31 variant:

SoC	Command
T31N	`make isvp_t31_msc0`
T31L	`make isvp_t31_msc0_lite`
T31X	`make isvp_t31_msc0_ddr128M`
T31A	`make isvp_t31a_msc0_ddr128M`

The expected output file is:

u-boot-with-spl.bin

Write U-Boot to SD Card

Identify the SD card device carefully:

fdisk -l

Then write U-Boot at the documented offset. Replace /dev/sdb with the actual SD card device:

dd if=./u-boot-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdb bs=512 seek=34

Boot from SD Card

If the flash bootloader is broken or empty, the SoC may boot from SD automatically. If a valid flash bootloader is still present, extra hardware steps may be needed to prevent booting from flash.

After booting the SD-card U-Boot, continue with the normal install or recovery procedure for the camera.