Hello Everyone,

I am having an issue with a 5350 iDirect modem. The modem has been bricked and has entered the classic recovery state "Can't reload stack."

Typically I would halt the RedBoot process by pressing the space bar at start-up but it doesn't exactly start up like a typical modem.

Here is its out-put in HyperTerminal as soon as power is applied:
Speed: 9600
Data Bits: 8
Stop Bits: 1
Parity: None
Flow Control: None

Begin modem out-put:

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ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÊCòLinux version 2.4.24-uc0-iDirect0 (root@eowyn-rh572) (gcc ver
sion 3.3.2) #1 Mon May 21 09:23:52 EDT 2012
CPU: XScale-IXP4xx/IXC11xx revision 1
Machine: iDirect Phoenix Platform
alloc_bootmem_low
memtable_init
Security risk: creating user accessible mapping for 0x51000000 at 0xf1000000
On node 0 totalpages: 32768
zone(0): 16384 pages.
zone(1): 16384 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: console=ttyS1,9600 root=/dev/mtdblock2
Calibrating delay loop... 532.48 BogoMIPS
Memory: 128MB = 128MB total
Memory: 127388KB available (1680K code, 477K data, 72K init)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
PCI: bus0: Fast back to back transfers enabled
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
JFFS2 version 2.1. (C) 2001 Red Hat, Inc., designed by Axis Communications AB.
i2c-core.o: i2c core module
i2c-dev.o: i2c /dev entries driver module
i2c-core.o: driver i2c-dev dummy driver registered.
i2c-algo-bit.o: i2c bit algorithm module
i2c-proc.o version 2.6.1 (20010825)
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI en
abled
ttyS00 at 0xff000003 (irq = 15) is a XScale UART
ttyS01 at 0xff001003 (irq = 13) is a XScale UART
Universal TUN/TAP device driver 1.5 (C)1999-2002 Maxim Krasnyansky
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ixp425_init: Window Size = 33554432
IXP425 Flash: Found 1 x16 devices at 0x1000000 in 16-bit mode
cfi_cmdset_0001: Suspend erase on write disabled.
Using buffer write method
Creating 6 MTD partitions on "IXP425 Flash":
0x00000000-0x00040000 : "RedBoot"
0x00060000-0x00160000 : "Linux"
0x00160000-0x01fe0000 : "RootFS"
0x01fe0000-0x01fff000 : "FIS directory"
mtd: partition "FIS directory" doesn't end on an erase block -- force read-only
0x01fff000-0x02000000 : "RedBoot config"
mtd: partition "RedBoot config" doesn't start on an erase block boundary -- forc
e read-only
0x01fe0000-0x02000000 : "FIS Overlap"
Board has 130nm flash part
pktgen.c: v1.3: Packet Generator for packet performance testing.
pktgen: Error: your machine does not have working cycle counter.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 1024 buckets, 8Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384)
IPv4 over IPv4 tunneling driver
GRE over IPv4 tunneling driver
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (1024 buckets, 8192 max) - 320 bytes per conntrack
ip_conntrack_pptp version $Revision: 1.1.1.1 $ loaded
ip_nat_pptp version $Revision: 1.1.1.1 $ loaded

A full boot out-put list is attached to this post.
I have tried multiple baud rates, different COM adapters, WinSCP, Putty, HyperTerminal, etc. with no luck.
As you can see, it's only when it first starts that it has the odd symbols.

Any suggestions?

---

Hi,

I think I have seen this before but cannot remember what steps I performed to unbrick the modem.

Usually I would do as you suggested and stop loading Linux at the redboot.

Perform the following steps to recover the root password for the iNFINITI
series:
1. Connect a PC to the modem via the console port. You can use Hyper
Terminal or Tera-Term for this operation.
2. Reboot the iNFINITI NetModem.
7
The message DRAM Test Successful displays.
3. Press the Spacebar 3 - 4 times.
The Redboot> prompt displays.
4. Type: fis load Linux
The Redboot> prompt re-displays.
5. Type: exec -c “root=/dev/mtdblock2 console=ttyS1,9600
single”
The /# prompt displays. This indicates that you logged in without a
password.
6. Enter the command: passwd
You are then prompted to enter a new password.
7. Enter a new password.
8. When prompted, type the new password again to confirm.
9. Once you are successfully logged in, reset the iNFINITI remote. You can now
log into the iNFINITI remote.

Then also confirm that you can gain IP access to the modem.

D ETERMINING THE  N ET M ODEM ’ S  IP A DDRESS AND  S UBNET  M ASK
1.  The easiest way to determine the NetModem’s IP address is to establish a
console session and type the appropriate console command
2.  Open a console session to the 0NetModem. (See Appendix A for details.)
Note: Use the  ifconfig command to find out the currently-configured IP
address.
3.  At the Linux prompt, type the following command: (for 3000 series, type:
ifconfig iXP0 )
ifconfig iXP1
4.  Check the IP address and subnet mask of the Satellite Router.
5.  Configure your laptop’s IP address to be in the same subnet as the Satellite
Router’s interface.
6.  Use the following commands to change the default gateway of the Satellite
Router to be the same as your laptop’s IP address by entering the following
commands:
route –n
route del default gw
route add default gw

Once you can ping the modem you should then be able to reapply all the image packages using iSite. Then apply an options file with correct SN.

Cheers,

I've tried to halt the boot process but it ignores the space bar interrupt. As you can see at the beginning of the modem's start-up, the characters are not typical to a standard modem's boot. The prompt to interrupt Red Boot on a regular modem comes at the same time the strange characters on my modem appear, and like I've said, pressing the space bar does not stop the boot. It is all very strange.

I've tried various settings for the communications port such as baud rate, but I cannot get the modem to display normal characters when power is first applied. It will only display normal characters after the first few lines.

I have conducted the procedure for reloading modem images and options files via command line before, but thank you for the input fluffymassive.