Help with a bricked Ti nspire CX

[tyrleng]

Hi all,

I have a ti-nspire cx calculator that is stuck on the loading screen, the progress bar is roughly 10%.

It was meant to be running on a nloader bootloader for Non-CAS OS.

I had actually followed the steps in this link to install a CAS OS at first, https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=21094 , configuring my settings according to what the tutorial stated. The calculator booted fine for the nLoader for CAS, and I managed to install the CAS OS without a problem.

I needed to revert the OS to a non-CAS OS for exams, so I created a non-CAS nloader image and flashed it over the previous CAS nLoader image. I didn't do any of the other steps, like resizing the partitions or reflashing the Diags partition since I thought those weren't needed. I then rebooted.

If it wasn't because I skipped the steps that I didn't follow in the tutorial, then I might therefore have did something wrong, e.g. flash over Boot1.5 4.40.8 in the Boot2 partition instead of the previous nLoader partition.

Anyway, when I rebooted, the calculator got stuck on the boot screen, so now there's no OS inside and the bootloader isn't working right. Anyone got any idea for how to rescue this calculator? I would really appreciate it, the ti nspires aren't cheap haha.

[critor]

Hi.

Being stuck at ~10% is... unusual.

Try holding , without releasing these 3 keys press and release the reset button on the back.
If the calculator doesn't automatically turn back on, still without releasing these 3 keys, type , 2 times if necessary.

[tyrleng]

Thank you, the esc + menu + minus + reset combination worked! That allowed me to boot into my diag partition, which had a boot2 bootloader in it. I could then load an os into the calculator and reset the nloader bootloader.

Turns out that the reason why the nloader bootloader failed was because I had built it wrongly, missing one of the steps in the tutorial.

Thanks once again critor!

[Hisham]

Critor never fails … eh eh eh …
Best,

Hisham

[critor]

You're welcome, I'm glad everything is ok now.

[Nico_3110]

Hello,
I'm new here and have a very similar problem. My nspire CX (Hardware rev. O) is completely bricked! Apparently there are no diags left and the boot2 partition is not working either. I suspect that I need a USB to TLL to save that again.
It happened when I tried to update ControlX from version 4.5.0 (or something like that) to 5.0.0. After the update ControlX was gone. But there was still a diags. After that I started the calculator (it still worked) and tried to install ControlX 5.0.0 again. After the restart the situation was as described above. The boot process seems to stop at about 50% and the key combinations to save the calculator didn't work anymore.
I hope I can somehow get past TLL because I don't know anything about it, but I think the prospects are bad. Also, I don't have any hardware for it at all.
Is the problem maybe ControlX 5.0.0? My OS version was 4.5.0.1180. The only thing that was weird was that ControlX 4.5 ran on my calculator with a wrong boot1.5 version, without any problems. Could it be that the update destroyed everything because of the wrong boot1.5 version?

Thanks in advance!

[critor]

Hi.

It's hard to guess what happened, I can just suppose you did something wrong.
Although ControlX is more robust than other boot loaders (Nlaunch, nLoader), it's still possible to brick things.

Can you share pictures of what you get with

• the default boot
• the alternate boot (holding while pressing and releasing the reset button)

?

Thanks.

[Nico_3110]

Thanks for the answer. It makes no difference how I boot the calculator. Both boot attempts have the calculator hanging right here:

[critor]

Thanks.

So, if I understand well :

• you probably still have nBoot
• your Diags partition has no launch-able ControlX image anymore for some reason
• with nBoot but without the ControlX patches/fixes, the images still present in your Boot2 partition seem to freeze the calculator (hence no maintenance menu)

If I were you, I'd get an USB/TTL interface and use it to reflash a working ControlX image in the Diags partition. It'll then be easier to find out what's wrong and fix it.

[Nico_3110]

Thank you for your efforts. I will try to get an adapter and then connect it as shown in the photo. If that's really the only way. Actually I'm very interested in what went wrong there or what I did wrong. I've had problems with the diags on this calculator before and the boot logo was gone as long as no ControlX and nBoot was installed.
It will probably take a few days until I can experiment with TLL here.
Should I try to flash ControlX 5.0.0 or should I use version 4.5.0 just to be sure?