Canon 550D bricked?

Started by Rocke4, April 20, 2016, 10:08:53 PM

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Rocke4

Summary: I switched the SD card from my Canon 550D with ML installed to a SD from a Sony DSLR without turning off the camera. Now the camera does nothing, no message in the screen nor LED blink. Is it dead?
EDIT1: I tried turning on whitout SD card, put the battery off and on, removing the lens... Almost everything.
EDIT2: The camera was bought five years ago.

Hello everyone! A month ago, i was shooting in studio with a few classmates, and i was lending my camera to a friend. I was using my SD card with magic lantern installed but her SD card came from a sony dslr. It was all ok but in some moment i switched the SD cards without turning off the camera. The result: The camera does nothing. No message in the screen, nor led blink... Im posting it a month later because i brought the camera to a Worten store, who said they have no idea what was wrong, except the motherboard was supplied of energy. They sent the camera to the official canon service, and i had a 220€ estimation of the cost of the reparation, for to change the (literally in spanish "Botonera") buttons with card sensor. I didnt acepted because it was so expensive, and now i have the camera wich only works as a paperweight. What can i do?

extremelypoorfilmaker

Try start the camera in C mode with a clean card / ML card / No card and wipe the custom setting. also look for dump files in the ML card

Rocke4

It does nothing in any mode, with any card...
What do you mean for dump files in the ML card?

Rocke4

At this point, i have lost the hope...
somebody could help me? D:


Rocke4

1, 2 and 3. I dont understand the 4th, and the led dont blink so 5th doestn work.

a1ex

Card is bootable? Did you take the battery out after each failed startup attempt?

If you can't run the diagnostics, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do to help, sorry.

Rocke4

Would you be so kind to explain me what is the meaning of bootable?
I didnt remove the battery after each attempt, does it matter?
Im trying again with this. Thank you a lot

Datadogie

Re-format the card. Then run EOScard load the required files. Then try again.

https://vimeo.com/38964397
T3i and Kiss X4 (550d (T2i)) Tamron 18-200mm, Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 (need firmware upgrade) Olympus 50mm f1.8  Olympus 28mm f2.8 and Olympus 24mm f2.8
Fancier 370 tripod and LCD hinged loupe. DIY Slider and crane.

simonm

This is an explanation. Datadogie has posted helpful advice above (while I was writing this). Try that, but read this bit about WAITING long enough after you take the battery out of the camera.

I am new to Magic Lantern, but beginning to understand a bit about how it works. I will try to explain what I understand in easy English. If I am wrong, I hope someone will correct me:


Your camera is a computer!

When you use the the on/off switch, your camera does NOT turn off completely. It goes into a "deep sleep" mode, like "suspend" on a laptop. Programs do not run, but they are still there, waiting for the camera to be turned "on" again.

If a program is not working properly, like on a PC, it will still be there (and still wrong!) when you wake the camera again. Using only the on/off switch will NOT help you!

To re-boot the camera completely you must remove power completely. Remove the battery but leave the power switch "on" (this helps power drain away) and WAIT for 10 minutes.

If your camera also has a button battery (to keep your personal settings in memory), you need to remove that too (yes, you will lose your personal settings).

Now, any code that was running in the camera, or stopping it from working normally, should be gone from memory.

To restart:

0. Make sure there is no card in the camera. Make sure you have waited long enough after you last tried to start the camera (10 minutes!).

1. If the camera needs a button cell, replace that first, then put a charged battery in the camera.

2. Turn the camera on. It should boot (just like any other computer). You should see only Canon's normal firmware (menus and display).

3. If all is good, check your Magic Lantern card, by repeating (1) and (2) WITH the Magic Lantern card in the camera. If (1) and (2) did not work, you have a bigger problem, and I probably cannot help (I am new to this!).

4. The camera should boot with Magic Lantern. If not, there is probably a card/ML problem. Go carefully through the Magic Lantern install process again, with a fresh card (keep the old one in case it has information to help diagnose the problems).

You will need to format the card in the camera (you will lose anything stored on the card!). Load ML onto it, from your PC, and follow the instructions carefully to install Magic Lantern again.

Bootable - what it means:

Remember: your camera is a computer. Normally, it just loads its programs from the flash memory inside the camera (Canon's firmware), but Magic Lantern changes this VERY slightly:

When you install ML for the first time (using the "Firmware Update" option in the camera's menus), it add a bit of code, which makes the camera look for "extra" programs on the card when the camera boots up.

On the Magic Lantern card there is a hidden setting, called a "boot flag". This is what the camera is looking for! If the boot flag is missing from the card, the camera stops trying to load Magic Lantern, and starts Canon's normal firmware instead, without Magic Lantern.

We call a card with this hidden boot flag :"bootable".

Normally, a standard-Canon-firmware camera will not ever see a card with a boot flag, after the camera leaves the factory. Users can not make cards like that, and would never need to.

I think Magic Lantern uses the "Firmware Update" process in two ways when it installs:
(1) It adds the extra, "permanent" code to the camera, so the camera will look for the boot flag on the card when it starts.
(2) It also adds the boot flag to the card, making it "bootable".

Why did your camera go wrong? Cameras with Magic Lantern use the card in a different way to normal. In all normal cameras, the card is only used to store images and video/audio. But the Magic Lantern card ALSO has programs on it.

Magic Lantern does not expect the card to "suddenly" have no Magic Lantern on it! This is what happened when you put the Sony card in the camera (probably). The Magic Lantern programs on the card could not be found and so the camera crashed.

With ML, you have to follow a different process to swap cards. You open the card door: the door sensor warns ML that the card will be changed soon, so it immediately stops using the programs on the card. This takes a few seconds, and you must wait. Then, when you swap cards, Magic Lantern can continue using the programs, in the same place on the new card. You cannot rely on the red card LED to tell you when it is safe; you must wait for 20 seconds.

Hope this is helpful and easy to understand.

Rocke4

Thanks to everybody. I just tried the methods you sugested but it doesnt work:
·I made the card bootable with EOScard?. EDIT Maybe i failed it, im trying again. I got this error
·I removed the battery for 10 minutes
·I removed the button battery and the regular battery for 10 minutes
·I tried to start in the manual modes (M, AV, TV)

But nothing happened. It didnt a single blink from the LED, and even less from the screen. Am I skipping something?

Thank you sincerely again for your time, your kindness and knowlegde.

nikfreak

You are doing right with EOSCARD. EOS_DEVELOP and BOOTDISK is ok.
Click SAVE and close EOSCARD. Extract 550D zip from builds.magiclantern.fm to your card.

Sorry to say. If all that will not work then sell it.You will get some money on ebay for it even if it does not turn on.
Then buy a used one again.
[size=8pt]70D.112 & 100D.101[/size]

a1ex

Just one more double-check: are you sure both the card and battery doors are properly closed? If any of them is open (or if their microswitches are not working), the camera won't show any sign of life when trying to power it on.

If it still doesn't help, I'm afraid it's most likely a hardware issue. The fix might be as simple as changing a fuse (soldering needed) or checking the microswitches (maybe with a multimeter), but if the first service said the camera receives power, I'm not 100% sure it will work.

Regarding this:

Quote from: Rocke4 on April 20, 2016, 10:08:53 PM
i switched the SD cards without turning off the camera.

I do that all the time. As long as you wait for the LED blinks to stop before removing the card, opening the card door is doing a clean shutdown. I actually consider this procedure to be actually safer than turning off the camera first. Why? Because, after you turn off the camera, it will wake up (!) as soon as you open the battery door, and it will stay so for a few seconds. Some cameras (5D2/50D) do not even blink the LED to let you know it's awake. (more details)

But if you remove the card while the LED is on, things may be different - you usually end up with a corrupted filesystem. In recent versions, ML does some consistency checks at startup before executing most of the code, but - in theory at least - you can still end up executing random code. However, even if the flash contents get screwed up (e.g. by having Canon code writing some bad settings in there, which can happen, because it saves the settings at shutdown), you usually have the bootloader untouched - in which case, you would see at least some LED blinks, and I would be able to reflash the old ROM, or restore the last known good settings (I already did that on a 5D3).

Rocke4

The message "Download failed" of the EOSCard is not an error? I keep trying.

Checked the doors, im sure they are closed properly. Thank you again, a lot.