I Bricked My AIXUN T320 Soldering Station. Help Needed!!! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: audris
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 21, 2025, 09:07:15 pm
content: I Bricked My T320 Soldering Station – Here's What HappenedSo yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to update the firmware on my T320 soldering station. Honestly, there wasn’t even a real reason—I just wanted to try it out.Since I’m using Linux, I went with a Python script I found on GitHub:https://github.com/c0d3z3r0/aixun_t3x_updater. I followed the instructions, and got as far as seeing “upgrade...” on the T320 screen. But then I couldn’t get any further. After a while of messing around, I gave up and decided to try using a Windows PC instead.On Windows, I downloaded AIXUN’s official firmware update tool. It connected to the T320 successfully, and seemed like it started updating—the progress bar even went from 0% to 100%. But after rebooting the station, it was stuck again on “upgrade...” Tried this multiple times. Then, at some point, my PC just stopped recognizing the T320 altogether.That’s when I had the idea of trying to flash the firmware manually via the SWD interface. I have an nRF52 DK board with an onboard SEGGER J-Link debugger, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I found the SWD pinout for the GD32F305 chip in the datasheet and confirmed the correct pins with a multimeter (GND, SWDIO, SWCLK, and VDD).Using SEGGER J-Flash, I managed to connect to the chip and erase the flash. Then I tried uploading the JC_M_T320_1.13.bin firmware file uploded sucesfuly. But... nothing happened. When I powered the station back on, the screen stayed black, and even the LED (which used to be on) didn’t light up anymore. I tried several times, but still no success.At this point, I think I’ve completely erased or corrupted the firmware, and now the T320 is fully bricked.If anyone out there knows how to recover from this or has a working firmware file that I can flash properly via SWD I’d really appreciate the help! I genuinely liked this soldering station, and I’d love to get it working again.Also, for context: I’m not an electrical engineer (not even a student yet—I’ll probably start studying next year). I don’t have a ton of experience with embedded systems, but I’ve used an SWD debugger a few times before. This was still one of my first real attempts at flashing firmware manually, so there’s a good chance I messed something up.Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!PS: English isn’t my first language, so I used ChatGPT to help fix grammar and make the post clearer.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2025, 11:21:08 pm
content: The problem here is likely that you erased the bootloader. So flashing the main app (JC_M_T320_1.13.bin) won't help when the bootloader is missing, the mcu will try to load bootloader and nothing is there, or some initial setup is in that bootloader. In the future you need to read the flash first, which usually is locked so won't even be possible.Maybe if you are lucky the .bin can be modified or flashed to the start address and still work.What address did you flash to? 0x08000000?

author: audris
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 09:46:40 am
content: Thanks for reply!I think I flashed to 0x00000000 because it was default address when I imported .bin file. But which address should I flashed?What do you mean by modified .bin file? You think I could find bootloader file and then add to the existing .bin file?

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 10:20:47 pm
content: Try 0x08000000 and maybe 0x00010000?If a bootloader exists, yes you could add to the bin, but if the bootloader exists you could just program that and then likely the updater software would work.Maybe someone can recover the bootloader, codezero had some work in the github you linked:https://github.com/c0d3z3r0/aixun_t3a_revWhat I mean by modify the .bin is, it can have header data that you need to remove.Or it might be compiled to run from the location 0x00010000, but the program will initialize at 0x0000000. So programming a jump command from 0x0000 to main_app, and loading main_app in the right location, might get it to function.

author: c0d3z3r0
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2025, 07:15:11 am
content: As already mentioned, you erased the bootloader. The update image doesn't contain the bootloader.You need to find someone who can dump a full T320 flash image.

author: audris
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 30, 2025, 01:39:22 pm
content: Thanks for the advice.Is there anyone who could provide a flash dump from a T320?Thanks in advance!

author: u666sa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2025, 11:46:01 pm
content: Try vlab.su for flash dump and also there is another site, I forgot it's URL, I want to say monitor.ws, but looks like it's not it.But yea. vlab.su definitely is going to help you out.

author: u666sa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2025, 11:49:16 pm
content: By the way. It's a good wake up call. I have to look into taking out dumps out of T420D and H314 respectively.

author: audris
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 01, 2025, 06:50:58 pm
content: Thanks for the advice! I posted here:https://vlab.su/viewtopic.php?f=170&t=103608&p=1106722#p1106722. I hope someone will be able to help.