Rockchip DEAD Player Recovery Guide

[knob]

SOFT Rockchip Dead Player Recovery.(Please try this first)

Important Note: Both the following 2 procedures are only really useful to you if you have a known working firmware for your player, I was lucky I had already managed to find one before I tried this.
Before you open your player PLEASE try the SOFT Dead player recovery procedure below, it could save you a lot of hassle opening up your player:-

All you do is this,

1) Switch the player OFF using the main on/off switch.

2) Hold down the "MENU" or the "PLAY" button and keep it held down.(try the other buttons if these dont work)

3) Connect the usb to the player.

4) Wait for about 10 seconds before releasing the menu key.

5) You are now in "RockUSB" upgrade mode!

6) Then just Start ConsumerUpdate and upload a working firmware and try it!

ConsumerUpdate should also REBOOT the player before starting the upgrade.

HARDWARE Rockchip Dead Player Recovery.(Last resort)

Whilst experimenting with firmware I blanked out the screen on my Rockchip player.
No problem I thought I can still navigate the menu “blind” and restore it to a firmware I know that works ok (I’d done this about half a dozen times before already)

But this firmware was different I just couldn’t find the Upgrade option, after about 30 attempts and three hours later I realised it’s time to try a full HARDWARE dead player recovery (something I’d been dreading)



Armed with my mini screwdriver set I started opening my player, 8 screws to take the case off and another 3 to lift the pcb up.



I noticed right under the display there is a big chip with 1 row of legs showing so I got a pair of tweezers and connected the USB to my PC



I didn't need to lift the display up to get the tweezers in but here's a picture showing the chip in case yours is different.

With the USB connected I ran the ConsumerUpdate program and loaded a known working firmware



Now for the next bit make sure your PC speakers are switched on.

All you need to do is simply run your tweezers across the chip legs on just that 1 side and wait for “Clink Clunk” sound of a USB connected notification from your PC, I’m not kidding it took no more than 5 goes with the tweezers to get it to connect.



So all I did then was quickly click the Update button



and ConsumerUpdate rebooted the player and started the update, It was that simple, I got my player back.



I’d say that the whole operation took no more than 15 minutes including opening the case and putting it back together again.


The only difficult part is you must have a firmware which works with your player and until we find a way to extract and backup our firmware that will always be a big problem.

Here is a link to some firmwares, tools and player documentation that I have recently found (not all are Rockchip some are Actions based).
D-Chord player range firmwares
DEC Player Pix
DEC Firmwares
ONDA downloads

Massive unbranded firmware search engine:-
http://www.s1fw.com/

PLEASE only use these firmwares for DEAD player recovery. From my own experience there is probably a 90% chance they will white screen your player - you have been warned!

edit
You may find it easier on your player to try shorting the following 2 pins:-


These are the actual pins (posted on a Chinese website) which have also been found to need shorting to get into RockUSB mode

[princessanne1026]

knob thanks for the recovery guide. It's very informative, but unfortunately, it didn't work for me. I tried shorting the pins and everything but even when I heard the connect sound and clicked "Update," Consumer Update didn't detect a RockUSB device. Ah well. Lesson learned. Don''t upgrade a rockchip player.

[knob]

I actually killed my player again yesterday messing around testing firmware (silly me!), so I had to open it up and do this again and it worked fine and I got my player back again, so I can confirm it does work.
I noticed that I needed to touch somewhere near the middle of the row of chip legs, although I guess my tweezers are just the right size to fit the pin spacing!

princessanne1026, Did your player actually do a reboot?, I noticed on my player the backlight went out when it did a reboot, just as if you had switched the player off and on again.

[princessanne1026]

knob, it's not that. I finally managed to get my computer to recognize it as a RockUSB device by navigating the menu blind, but unfortunately it can't update because the memory chip is corrupt and it says "Too many bad blocks" when I load a firmware and try to upgrade. So now all I basically have is a cardreader for my minisd. Sucks, but hey I only have myself to blame. I will NEVER upgrade a rockchip player again. I'm glad you were fortunate enough to fix yours though, and your guide is very good. It'll help others with dead rockchip players.

[makd511]

princessanne1026

i had the same problem with the bad block after trying a totally random firmware!!!

The player could see the menus but went white screen when going into browser mode, i tried blindly navigating to the upgrade screen but every time i did this the computer recognized the player as normal so could not get it to upgrade mode.

But i did manage to recover the player again, this is what i did:

1. connect the player as normal to comp and let windows recognize as removable drive.

2. went to the tool bar and selected to 'safely remove disk drive' from the pop up list and let it disappear from windows. but left the player connected.

3 the i did hardware reboot by shorting the pins, took a few attempts but eventually windows saw it as rock usb device.

4 the i loaded the NAND tool available in the downloads section and (not knowing exactly what i was doing) selected to 'erase flash' and the to 'test block'.

5 when done, closed NAND tools and opened consumer update and selected known working firmware.

And it worked!!!

the player re-booted and all was back to normal, so i went in and tested the memory and it asked to format - success, formated the drive and all was ok

this is my experience, what have you got to lose, give it a go and see what happens

makd

[knob]

makd511,

That is amazing, I glad the Nand tool worked, I couldn't get it to do anything on my player!
Just goes to show with these Rockchip players, even if they look exactly the same they all act differently.

[princessanne1026]

makd511 - if this works, you'll be a lifesaver! Could you please tell me the steps you took to use the Nand tool to erase and test block? I can't make any sense of the thing. Thank you so much for giving me hope though! My player has been practically dead for months.

[princessanne1026]

agh. I've been playing around with ConsumerUpdate and Nandtools for hours and haven't broken through yet. I think I'll take a break until tomorrow.

[makd511]

this is the player i recovered - just for reference
it is a 1GB 2.4" SD card slot player.



hi princessanne1026

sorry to hear your having no success.

i used the NAND tool out of desperation and, to be honest, had no idea what to do with it. All i did was, once the player was in update mode in windows, i.e. recognized as a rock usb device, i just started up NAND and hit all the buttons in turn.

this seemed to work for me and my player, i do know that knob, who uploaded the tool, also had no luck with the NAND tool on his player so it may only work with certain hardware.
the player i have is a rockchip 2606, for the larger screen type, maybe that it the difference.

Are you actually at the stage where your player is recognized as a rock usb device in windows and not a removable drive as NAND, like consumer update, wont see the player otherwise.

keep trying is all i can say right now and let us know the result.
if all fails the it may be time for a new player, i have bought this one from
www.dealextreme.com


it was only $50 and is 2.4", 1GB with mini SD slot and free delivery.

good luck and let me know how it goes

makd

[knob]

makd511
I think you are right about the screen size, I have the smaller screen size and it started to recognise the player but then always failed, the tool was intended for the Onda VX979 which is the bigger 2.4" screen like yours, so it probably will work with most of the bigger screen Rockchip players.

If I manage to find a NAND tool for the 2" screen I will upload it , I could do with it myself as I have the 2" screen.

Interestingly I noticed the NAND tool has a Save as option, I was hoping you could extract the firmware with this, but of course was unable to test it