[INFO/DEV] My "unbrick" method seems to be obsolete, and this is probably why (hint: Acer being assholes)

[Guest behnaam]

Hi guys,

Long time since I've been around in the Liquid section. A few months ago I made a post regarding recovery of "bricked" devices and that I could help people out using methods that isn't out for the public. Now the really bad news is that the method seems to not work anymore (the last 3 devices failed). This is really strange to me as it successfully recovered 11 devices from a "bricked" state before the recent flood of leaked builds. The common nominator for almost all these 3 recent devices is that they tried to/had one of the recent builds flashed on it. Now my theory is this:

1. Acer changed the partition layout somehow which means the method for accessing the hidden "Clean Boot" mode is not working, maybe there is a new method for accessing it.
   
2. Acer implemented a new HBOOT/bootloader protection that doesn't allow a "normal" user to access "Clean Boot" and requires some certain security check to be flagged off first.
   
3. Acer removed it.
   
4. Works, just 3 unlucky devices or the owner of these didn't perform the method exactly as I described it for them even though I repeated the procedure multiple times and they confirmed (not likely).
   
5. Totally new method and tools.
   

Now to me it's most likely Acer changed something and I unfortunately don't have any contact with any Acer "source" that can confirm this or give me the updates on what to do.

Now I'm not a big fan of conspiracies, but could it be Acer doing this on purpose? Has anybody found the changes already? What can we do to regain access to this vital requirement to recover devices?

Let this thread be for further discussions on how we can find new ways to recover devices and finding what have happen.

And please if you see this thread, don't PM me asking for help, because I've explained above why I can't help anymore.

Regards,

B

Edited October 7, 2010 by behnaam

[Guest jayziac]

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories either. Perhaps in the more recent ROMS Acer needed more memory and got rid of the clean boot sectors in order to put it to more practical use? Or the Froyo builds required major changes. Intentionally getting rid of the clean boot that only a few people had access to doesn't make sense. If Acer wanted to discourage people from flashing ROMs, they could've achieved that by other less convoluted methods.

[Guest snootched]

I'm pretty sure the partition layout was changed. Malez wrote a post a while back about this affecting nandroid backup/restore from his recovery image. He's accommodated for it in recovery 0.6. That might the the issue you are seeing..

[Guest xaueious]

Bump for the sake of keeping this topic under discussion.

[Guest Borkata]

Here is the partition layout in latest 2.2 leak:

cat /proc/mtd

dev:	size   erasesize  name

mtd0: 000a0000 00020000 "misc"

mtd1: 00500000 00020000 "recovery"

mtd2: 00500000 00020000 "boot"

mtd3: 0c800000 00020000 "userdata"

mtd4: 0a500000 00020000 "system"

mtd5: 04ce0000 00020000 "cache"

mtd6: 00200000 00020000 "kpanic"

mtd7: 00040000 00020000 "dinfo"

mtd8: 00060000 00020000 "setupdata"

mtd9: 00080000 00020000 "splash1"

mtd10: 01380000 00020000 "modem"

Hope it is helpful. If I can help with something else just ask :)