Did you do a ROM upgrade with a cooked ROM recently and it bricked your device? That usually happens when you flash your device with a ROM that was not meant for your device. Scenarios include flashing your Glofiish X500 with a Glofiish X500+ ROM or even a Glofiish M800 ROM. When this happens, your device is bricked (or some call it semi-bricked) because you can’t seem to do anything with it. It’s nothing more than a brick. Even flashing with the right ROM the next time around will produce an error: Os Image is NOT compatible with this hardware. So what do you do?

Until recently, you could not do anything except to send it back to Eten for repairs. And since you are not suppose to be uploading cooked (unofficial) ROMs to your device, your warranty is void and you would need to pay for the repair. That’s the good case scenario. In a worst case scenario, they’d refuse to repair your device and you are stuck with it. Well that was in the past, things are different now.

Preparation

Now you can repair your device on your own if this does happen to you. But first, you will need to download and install a Hex Editor. There are some free versions out there and in this example, I am using the freeware Hex Editor XVI32. If you do not know your way around, I would recommend that you download that program but if you know your way around, any application works fine.

The other thing that you need to prepare is the ROM that you are going to use to fix your device. You will need the temp.dat file. Usually when you download a cooked ROM, you will see a similar file but called temp.bin. Just rename it to temp.dat and use that instead.

If you prefer to use an official ROM, then follow the steps in Flashing Your ROM From SD Card up to step 3.

Step by Step

Now that you have prepared the things you need, it’s time to get fixing. Feel free to click on any of the screenshots below to get a larger picture.

1. Launch your hex editor. This is my startup screen.

2. Click on File > Open. A window like the one above will pop up and you navigate to the location of your temp.dat

3. Once loaded, you should see something similar to the screenshot above.

4. Click on Address > Go to.

5. A box will pop up. Under the Go to heading, choose hexadecimal and enter $38. You should get the screenshot as above. When you do, click OK.

6. You will then be brought to the cell in question. Enter 0A 3D 72 F4. The end result will look like something above

7. Once done, save the file in temp.dat (which is the original filename).

You can now use this recently edited file to unbrick your device. Just follow the steps to Flashing Your ROM From SD Card and your device should come back to life.

Some Notes

• For those familiar with hex editing, you will want to patch from offset 0×38 with the bytes 0A 3D 72 F4.
• What you see above will vary from ROM to ROM. However, the magic bytes (as Cyril calls them), will remain the same.
• This unbricking guide will only work for Eten devices and only for those that can enter the bootloader mode. If your device cannot enter this mode, it looks like you have a bigger problem and might have to send the device in for repairs.
• At the moment, it has only been tested on devices that were flashed with the wrong ROM.

Have you tried this? Does it work for you?

Thanks to Cyril of Eten Users Forum for coming up with the ‘magic bytes’ and thenenea for outlining the steps in Eten Blog dot Com’s forum.

Tags: guide