How to recover AZBox HD died during an upgrade by andressis2k

This tutorial details the process of recovering a dead AZBox. I am not responsible if,

because of it, your box results in worse shape than it was (although this is difficult :P)

Nor do I accept responsibility if this tutorial doesn’t work with your box. In my AZBox

HD Elite worked perfectly.

Necessary components

A PC (I used Windows Xp, but in theory, any operative system should work)

A 232 TTL interface (I built it with one Nokia cable)

A big bowl of warm chocolate milk (you can change it for coffee, tobacco, or what each

choice)

A dead AZBox. In my case, the power went out during an update, and still remains on

“Booting”

Step 1

First we have to connect the box to the PC by RS232. On internet you’ll find lot of

schematics, so I will not explain this

RS232 pinout of the Elite model is as follows:

(thanks to the author of the picture. I don’t now who he is)

You will also have to connect the decoder to a network outlet

Step 2 Download PuTTY http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe , and save it

wherever you want.

Run it, and configure it as in the following image, changing the serial port for yours:

Click Open, and turn on the box (rear switch).

We will see a succession of lines. When we see what the next image, press Ctrl + C. We

must be careful, because we have little more than a second for it

If we get nothing when turning on the box, check the connections and the COM port

you have selected. If we are sure that all is well, and still no communication with the

box, your AZBox is much damaged, and this tutorial will not help you.

Step 3

Now we are on Yamon console. It shows a command interpreter YAMON>

First is to initialize the network interface.

Introduce the following, pressing Enter after each line

setenv bootserver 192.168.1.5 (IP address of your computer)

setenv gateway 192.168.1.1 (router address)

setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.55 (IP address you want for AZBox)

setenv subnetmask 255.255.255.0 (network mask)

net init (initializes network)

net up (gets up network interface)

Well, we already have network connection in the box (although it does not have telnet,

ftp, or anything else)

Step 4

Download and install TFTPd32 http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32.html

Unzip attached folder “Files” anywhere on your PC

Open TFTPd32, and click the browse button. Choose the Files folder, and click Ok.

In Server Interfaces, select the network interface that is connected to the local network

(in case we have more than one)

Step 5

Return to the putty windows and type:

load –b tftp://192.168.1.5/vmlinux.bin 0x90020000 (changing the IP for your computer IP

address)

This will load the kernel in RAM (for now we do not change anything in the flash)

During the process we may obtain some errors emm86xx_eth: rx error. Ignore it

Step 6

After loading the kernel, enter: go

And our box will boot!

No video output, no VFD display (it will stay off)… but network and FTP server works,

which is all we need to fix it

It’s very important that our network has a DHCP server (99% of routers include it).

Otherwise, the decoder will not get IP address

During boot, you will see a line:

It tells us the IP address of the box. In our case, 172.26.2.113

Step 7

Now let’s go to transfer the necessary files to the box using FTP

To do this, we connect with our favorite FTP client (I use filezilla). You have to enter

the IP address we got on previous step. The user is root, and the password is azbox, as

usual. Copy files (Files are in the Files folder of this tutorial):

backup_kernel : Copy it to /MMP on the box

update : Copy it to /tmp on the box

Step 8

Return to the putty windows, where it asks login and password.

The user is root, and the password azbox.

Type:

cd /tmp (We move to /tmp directory)

chmod a+x update (We give the file run permission)

./update /MMP/backup_kernel (start restoration)

The process will begin, and will show progress.

When the process completes, the decoder will reboot, and will come to life!

We have 100% operational box with the original firmware!

Now, we can flash the firmware we want. Don’t forget to make a “Format Application

Area” to clean up remnants of previous firmware

Acknowledgements

I’ve only gathered information, made 1000 tests and explained here.

Acknowledgements to:

www.satmips.com : Possibly the best forum of support for our AZBox

www.azboxhd.es : Best Spanish language forum four our AZBox

And all users who works selflessly every day to improve our box