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About to JTAG an iBox II plus

Kremmen

Kremmen

RETIRED. INACTIVE MEMBER
A friend of a friend was about to throw out his iBox that died a few months ago. Luckily my mate grabbed it & gave it to me.

I just get the blue light on the front & nothing else, so looks like it needs JTAG to revive it.

I'm just waiting for my Cypress EZ-USB board to arrive. Looks easy enough to follow using a tut I found on another site.

As this is my first encounter with an iBox, am I right in thinking that once I've (hopefully) revived it, that I can flash it with any of the images for the iBox 2 plus on the cloud-ibox.net site?

If so, are there some that are better than others, as there are a lot to choose from?

My box appears to be an "original clone" as it has "AIR DDT-1300 HD R1.0 2013.12.18" on the mainboard & "AIR DDT-1300HD R1.0 CA 2013/12/25" on the card reader. It also doesn't say "Made in Korea" on the back.
 
mortmaru said:
Have you tried the rs232 port to see if it flashes any info up?
Click to expand...

No, I haven't tried that.

Other than switch it on, I haven't tried anything yet.

I have Hyperterminal on my XP machine. I'll give it a go tomorrow.
 
Also the blue light doesnt mean it needs jtag always. Ive gone through a few that seem dead but multiple trys of bootloader and image have worked all but 1 time. They are v picky with usbs but low level format with pc prog normally rectafies.
Good luck either way tho dude.

Yeh images and most up to date loader are there. I think the new images are good. Little more plugins and working feeds.
But ive only experience with the unofficial vix on them
 
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sucmnsee said:
Also the blue light doesnt mean it needs jtag always. Ive gone through a few that seem dead but multiple trys of bootloader and image have worked all but 1 time. They are v picky with usbs but low level format with pc prog normally rectafies.
Good luck either way tho dude.

Yeh images and most up to date loader are there. I think the new images are good. Little more plugins and working feeds.
But ive only experience with the unofficial vix on them
Click to expand...


This is good advise but I would try rs232 method before trying bootloaders in case it is not an original airsat you can find out via this method.

I think you should try some other images I know you like OpenVix which to be fair it does appear easy to setup but I really am a fan of Egami it supports the Sky skin and runs very quick it also has a function to setup running multi images.
 
Sometimes you can have just too much choice! LOL.

The only satellite boxes I've played around with up till now have been the openbox/skybox & Dreambox 500. You have no choice with the skybox, & with the Dreambox I use Commando 15 (after briefly trying openPLI).

I will have a go with the RS232 later today & also have a go at flashing with USB.

As for the bootloader, I downloaded all the required files for JTAGing from a thread on Sat Universe. It included a file called CLOUDBOOT.bin dated 31/5/14 (4096kB). I've just downloaded the bootloader from cloud-ibox.net & it comprised of a folder called cloudix containing 3 files:-

cfe.bin 5/8/14 438kb
force 5/8/14 1kb (actual 2 bytes)
imageversion 5/8/14 1kb (actual 30 bytes)

I'm a bit confused. CLOUDBOOT.bin & cfe.bin both seem to be bootloaders, but one is 10 times bigger than the other.
 
Kremmen said:
Sometimes you can have just too much choice! LOL.

The only satellite boxes I've played around with up till now have been the openbox/skybox & Dreambox 500. You have no choice with the skybox, & with the Dreambox I use Commando 15 (after briefly trying openPLI).

I will have a go with the RS232 later today & also have a go at flashing with USB.

As for the bootloader, I downloaded all the required files for JTAGing from a thread on Sat Universe. It included a file called CLOUDBOOT.bin dated 31/5/14 (4096kB). I've just downloaded the bootloader from cloud-ibox.net & it comprised of a folder called cloudix containing 3 files:-

cfe.bin 5/8/14 438kb
force 5/8/14 1kb (actual 2 bytes)
imageversion 5/8/14 1kb (actual 30 bytes)

I'm a bit confused. CLOUDBOOT.bin & cfe.bin both seem to be bootloaders, but one is 10 times bigger than the other.
Click to expand...


How to install bootloader or image through RS232 console
 
mortmaru said:
Kremmen said:
Sometimes you can have just too much choice! LOL.

The only satellite boxes I've played around with up till now have been the openbox/skybox & Dreambox 500. You have no choice with the skybox, & with the Dreambox I use Commando 15 (after briefly trying openPLI).

I will have a go with the RS232 later today & also have a go at flashing with USB.

As for the bootloader, I downloaded all the required files for JTAGing from a thread on Sat Universe. It included a file called CLOUDBOOT.bin dated 31/5/14 (4096kB). I've just downloaded the bootloader from cloud-ibox.net & it comprised of a folder called cloudix containing 3 files:-

cfe.bin 5/8/14 438kb
force 5/8/14 1kb (actual 2 bytes)
imageversion 5/8/14 1kb (actual 30 bytes)

I'm a bit confused. CLOUDBOOT.bin & cfe.bin both seem to be bootloaders, but one is 10 times bigger than the other.
Click to expand...


How to install bootloader or image through RS232 console
Click to expand...
hi mate iv put a guide up how to jtag the cloud box on the forms if u need it
 
mortmaru said:
Kremmen said:
Sometimes you can have just too much choice! LOL.

The only satellite boxes I've played around with up till now have been the openbox/skybox & Dreambox 500. You have no choice with the skybox, & with the Dreambox I use Commando 15 (after briefly trying openPLI).

I will have a go with the RS232 later today & also have a go at flashing with USB.

As for the bootloader, I downloaded all the required files for JTAGing from a thread on Sat Universe. It included a file called CLOUDBOOT.bin dated 31/5/14 (4096kB). I've just downloaded the bootloader from cloud-ibox.net & it comprised of a folder called cloudix containing 3 files:-

cfe.bin 5/8/14 438kb
force 5/8/14 1kb (actual 2 bytes)
imageversion 5/8/14 1kb (actual 30 bytes)

I'm a bit confused. CLOUDBOOT.bin & cfe.bin both seem to be bootloaders, but one is 10 times bigger than the other.
Click to expand...


How to install bootloader or image through RS232 console
Click to expand...

Yep. I've seen that post. I looked on the Airsatddt site (I assume that's the one he meant) to find the bootloder he was talking about, but there is nothing in the downloads section of their site. I just wondered how big the bootloder is, as I'm still confused as to the 2 different sizes.
 
Look in cloud downloads here dude.

I have put both the 29/5/14 and 5/8/14 bootloaders there wih guides :)

Ps both were from cloud-ibox.net so are ok.

Any image before 5/8/14 use older loader. Anything after use 5/8/14 loader.
these only work flashing by usb.
I assume the cloudboot is for rs232 or jtag flashing
 
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lee benson said:
hi mate iv put a guide up how to jtag the cloud box on the forms if u need it
Click to expand...

Yep. Thanks. Just seen your guide. It's a duplicate of the one I have already seen on Sat Universe.

Have you actually done this yourself? If so, did you use the CLOUDBOOT.bin file in the attached files in the Sat Universe thread as the bootloader file?

Hopefully I will be getting the single jumper board (that's the one shown in the advert anyway, but you never know), but I've seen that there are members on other forums that have managed to get the 2 jumper boards to work.
 
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sucmnsee said:
Look in cloud downloads here dude.

I have put both the 29/5/14 and 5/8/14 bootloaders there wih guides :)

Ps both were from cloud-ibox.net so are ok.

Any vix before 5/8/14 use older loader. Anything after use 5/8/14 loader.
these only work flashing by usb.
I assume the cloudboot is for rs232 or jtag flashing
Click to expand...

OK. Thanks for that.

Yep. Perhaps the bootloader needs to be different when JTAGing. Whatever I do, I don't suppose I can make it any worse!

Just about to put the board back in it's case & fire up my XP machine. I'll see if I can get any response from the serial port & attempt to flash by USB a few times.
 
Well I tried hyperterminal and putty last night & no response at all. Also had a go at loading by USB, but nothing worked.

Looks like the only way is JTAG.
 
Failed at the first hurdle!

The Cypress EZ-USB board arrived today. I fired up the XP machine, installed .net framework 3.5 & 4, installed Broadcom studio & BCM97358, then connected the Cypress EZ-USB board & got a message saying "USB device not recognised - One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and windows does not recognise it".

I googled the error message but it looks like a hardware problem. I bought the Cypress EZ-USB board from Hong Kong & it took 18 days to get here. I could try one from a UK seller I suppose, but they are twice the price.
 
On close inspection of the EZ-USB board, I've found a capacitor soldered vertically in the air instead of across the pads on the board.

I'll refit it tomorrow & try again.
 

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Aarrggg...I'm getting nowhere fast!

I soldered the capacitor & win XP recognised it this time...but as a "CAS interface 3 USB" board!!! These are boards made by Duolabs. I let windows install the drivers anyway, just to see what happened. It installed a driver called "jungo". When I googled it, I did find some hits that included cas interface 3 and cypress EZ-USB, but I cannot fathom out what the connection is.

Was that capacitor left unconnected for a reason?

The only reason I'm doing this on an XP machine is because the author of the instructions say that it it wouldn't work on a win7 machine, but was OK on XP.

I might try it on my Vista machine, with & without the capacitor & see what it recognises it as.
 
It's alive...IT'S ALIVE!!!

I tried the cypress board with Vista & W7 & it was seen as an unidentified device which windows couldn't find drivers for...so back to XP. I noticed that I had a program on the desktop called CAS interface studio. What a coincidence. That's what XP thought my cypress board was! I vaguely remember installing it years ago when I used to play around with USB card programmers etc.

So I uninstalled it. I also uninstalled the jungo drivers that it wrongly installed. This time it was recognised as Broadcom Test Adapter & installed the correct drivers. I thoght I had hit another brick wall when selecting the device from the Broadband Studio program, but it was an error in the tutorial (which no one had noticed in the 7 months it has been up on the other site).

I now get the "boot" message when I turn it on. It just needs to flashed by USB with an image.

p.s. I always assumed that USB devices had unique identifiers that were read by the OS when it was plugged in. So why did XP get it wrong just because I had a bit of software installed?
 
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