[Milestone 2 General] david.datatone:
More on 'bricked' Milestone 2

I am going to journal my experiences with this, in the hope that it will be useful to someone else.

Possibly the mistake that I made when flashing the CM11 (see above) is that I didn't put the md5 sum file onto the SD card with the archive. Note that all downloads have a .zip and a .zip.md5sum file. The phone output a message to say that it couldn't find a checksum, but that it was going ahead anyway. Possibly, had I put the md5sum file in, a fault with the zip file would have been detected and I may have been saved from this issue.

I have found references to a 'Motorola factory cable' which is a cable that is wired to persuade the phone not to worry about battery state and to operate the flashing utility from the usb cable power. this is obviously useful in the factory for programming the phone without a battery. See this link for information:

[unfortunately the site didn't allow me to attach a url to 'www dot droidforums dot net' where you might find a posting 'how-why-to-make-your-own-motorola-factory-cable', which is a well-writen and informative article]

My phone is in a state that the charger will operate to charge the battery as normal when the charger is plugged in with the phone off. It still shows the image of a battery filling up. Therefore I can keep my battery in good condition between recovery attempts, and I don't think I'll need any special cables.

My technique for putting the archives onto the SD card is to take the card out of the phone and put it into my laptop, so that I can simply manage the files on it with standard Windows file browser.

I can get to a very promising recovery utility by holding down the 'X' key on the keyboard whilst switching the phone on. The Motorola 'M' logo comes up and the screen then displays a 3D orange triangle with an exclamation mark and a little green Android man. If I press the keyboard '@' at this point, I jump into a recovery menu.

The recovery menu has options:

* 'reboot system now'

* 'apply sdcard:update.zip'

* 'wipe data/factory reset'

* 'wipe cache partition'

The 'apply sdcard:update.zip' seems to offer the promise of recovery.

I have tried placing both:

* cm-10.2-20140312-UNOFFICIAL-milestone2 (.zip and .zip.md5sum)

and

* cm-11-20141003-UNOFFICIAL-milestone2 (.zip and .zip.md5sum)

onto the sdcard (renamed as 'update.zip' and 'update.zip.md5sum').

In both cases the recovery utility says:

---

E:Can't open /cache/recovery/command

E:Can't open /cache/recovery/caller

-- Install from sdcard...

Finding update package...

Verifying update package...

E:failed to verify whole-file signature

E:signature verification failed

Installation aborted

---

If I remove the update.zip.md5sum file, the result is identical. Therefore I don't think that this utility is using the md5sum for archive file verification. The problem that I seem to have at the moment is that I need an archive in the right format for the factory recovery utility.

I will be researching this and will add to this thread when I find an answer.

As a little bit of extra information, whilst fiddling about with the buttons during power up, I did manage to get a screen that said:

---

Bootloader

70.12

Battery OK

OK to Program

Connect USB

Data Cable

---

I guess that this is a lower stage in the bootloader chain, and suggests that there is hope if your phone is screwed up to the extent that you can't get the factory recovery utility. Thankfully, I don't seem to need to investigate what is required at the PC end to make use of this low level programming aid. (If anyone knows, it would be good to hear the details, for future reference and help to others).

Alas, I'm not sure what I did to bring this screen up - I fiddled with the volume, camera, and power buttons whilst the phone was starting up.

Regards,

David