[Droid Eris Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bftb0:
OK - at least we know things won't get worse as a result of the battery.

I'm wondering if what got corrupted is the "BCB" - bootloader control block. (Basically a whole bunch of options which are passed to the kernel - I think it happens via flash memory (at a well-known base address) rather than through RAM. Since the regular OS is never running simultaneously with the bootloader, the only two options to pass information between them is either through RAM or Flash. I think it is flash memory, but am not 100% sure. The same thing happens with the recovery boot

If that is the case, a perfectly valid recovery (either stored in flash memory, or live-booted using fastboot might still choke if it was passed some garbage during boot - the same thing would be true of the regular kernel boot, too.)

Problem is, I don't know of a way to clear or reset the BCB without getting something running on the phone.

When you perform a regular boot via a fastboot OEM command, as in:

fastboot oem boot

it will spew information about what is being passed to the recipient kernel. When I do it on my phone, I get this:

C:\Users\user>fastboot oem boot
...
INFOsetup_tag addr=0xA0000100 cmdline add=0x8F066FD0
INFOTAG:Ramdisk OK
INFOTAG:smi ok, size = 32
INFOTAG:hwid 0x0
INFOTAG:skuid 0x21E01
INFOTAG:hero panel = 0x4
INFOTAG:engineerid = 0x0
INFOSAMSUNG_512MB_FLASH_256MB_RAM_DUAL_DIE_ID
INFOSAMSUNG_512MB_FLASH_256MB_RAM_DUAL_DIE_ID
INFOTAG:mono-die = 0x0
INFODevice CID is not super CID
INFOCID is VZW__001
INFOsetting.cid::VZW__001
INFOserial number: HT9AAAA#####
INFOcommandline from head: no_console_suspend=1 console=null
INFOcommand line length =407
INFOactive commandline: board_desirec.disable_uart3=0 board_desi
INFOrec.usb_h2w_sw=0 board_desirec.disable_sdcard=0 diag.enabled
INFO=0 board_desirec.debug_uart=0 smisize=32 androidboot.baseba
INFOnd=2.42.01.04.27 androidboot.cid=VZW__001 androidboot.carrie
INFOr=COMMON androidboot.mid=PB0010000 androidboot.keycaps=qwert
INFOy androidboot.mode=normal androidboot.serialno=HT9AAAA#####
INFOandroidboot.bootloader=1.49.2000 no_console_suspend=1 consol
INFOe=null
INFOaARM_Partion[0].name=misc
INFOaARM_Partion[1].name=recovery
INFOaARM_Partion[2].name=boot
INFOaARM_Partion[3].name=system
INFOaARM_Partion[4].name=cache
INFOaARM_Partion[5].name=userdata
INFOpartition number=6
INFOValid partition num=6
INFO0
INFO0
INFO0
INFO0
( --repeats for a while like this --)
INFO0
INFO0
FAILED (status read failed (Too many links))
finished. total time: 0.805s

Does your look similar or identical?

(I realize that I am just asking you for information, rather than providing a solution, or saying "just go ahead and flash the whole Root ROM" - but a few folks nuked their phones that way when they were in similar circumstances. I appreciate it sucks not having a phone - but the more patient you are, the more eyes will have a look at this; perhaps someone will come up with something clever)

BTW - I am under the impression that you can get the phone into both Hboot mode and fastboot mode, no problem - will it also go into RUU mode? (fastboot oem rebootRUU) You will need to battery pull to get out of RUU mode.

bftb0