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Here's the happy ending to the story of my Canon 70D not turning on!
Having researched further and concluded that my camera's main board was cooked (ie nothing to do with ML), and then been given the news (by Canon service) that since my camera was out of warranty (4 yers old), that a replacement main board was going to cost me in excess of $500 to replace, I reluctantly decided to send the camera to Canon to be repaired.

A few days after shipping it off, I happened to be on the Canon site and came across this product notice!

https://www.canon.co.nz/support/support-news/support-news/customer-support-error-70-error-80-eos-70d-dslr-camera

Long story short, my 70D qualified for a free mainboard replacement!

I just today received my now-working camera back from Canon, with an invoice value of  $0.00!  (and a refund of my $70 compulsory inspection fee!)

Wow! I was feeling a bit down on Canon before this, but now I can only say "Thanks so much Canon for restoring my faith in manufacturers who do demonstrate that they value their customers and will (eventually!) stand fully behind their products!"

...There is a low-level portable display test,...
... you could try this route...

Both these links go to the same place?!

I'm willing to try the JTAG route if for no other reason than the challenge, but also in the hope of possibly understanding what has gone wrong and whether it may be possible to unbrick the camera. I have both RPi and Arduino, and a camera that does not need to be restored in a hurry. So with nothing much to lose other than potentially some resale value the longer I keep it (assuming it is still worth repairing) and some time, and everything to gain from the possibility that I might avoid >$400 unnecessary expense, I'd be prepared to give things a go if someone wanted to provide technical support/guidance!?

In the meantime, I'll see if I can grab a battery grip (hopefully one that is compatible with both 70D and7D Mark 2, and not so costly it cant be sacrificed to the cause) to try the technique/s in the link above.

Did you try following the steps from video linked in second reply of this thread on Canon forum? Although strange, many report it helped...

Yes, wish it had been that simple, but no, it didn't work for me :-(

Cam not showing any signs of activity (LED blinking, screens flickering, any sound at all): It's up to a1ex for a final verdict but I would say this cam is an ex-cam.
I take it for granted you checked card compartment door switch before.

Yes. Thanks for your support, Walter. Appreciate it. :-)

Yes, used MacBoot v1.11 to set the Make DSLR-bootable option,





Is it possible to try any other options?

unfortunately, it does nothing, with SD card (non-boot or bootable ML), or without card inserted.

No luck. I'm thinking my bootflag is no longer set in the camera.

Apart from changing the bootflag, when uninstalling ML, is there any possible data/variable residue, or program code, that is in any way related to ML left anywhere in camera memory ?

Yep. Done that ad infinitum.

I'm not getting any life even with no card inserted.

What do you mean by "- slow down startup process and wake-up from sleep"? Is that a comment, or a suggestion to do? If so, how?

Hmm, a while since I did it, but the first one sounds most likely as it 'sounds' like what I was wanting to do (ie remove all trace of ML from the camera).

But now reading the way the prompt is worded makes me wonder whether 'removing ML'  from the camera (which would just be restoring the boot flag, as I understand it, since ML code isn't actually left resident on the camera) or just removing ML from the card and reformatting it would have been the result?

How do the outcomes of the two options differ?

[Stop press: Re-reading some forum posts to remind myself, I'm pretty sure I probably did both! Originally did the first method, then found the bootflag hadn't been reset as I could still put another ML-loaded bootable card in the camera and bring ML up. So, I then twigged to the message at the bottom of the screen given in the second option (of pressing Q button and waiting).]

Sorry in advance if this better belongs in a different thread, but it is somewhat related to ML on the 70D.
Long story short: My 4 year old 70D has had ML enabled and running successfully on it for the last few years.
I decided to sell it (as I have a 7DMk2 now) so I uninstalled ML (using the menu option) in order to sell my camera in original 'as built' condition for the future owner. (Probably unnecessary, but anyway, I did).
The sale process had an unplanned pause of 5 months inserted in it, during which time the 70D was left unused in my camera bag without a battery installed.
When I came to start the sale process again last week, I put a fully charged battery back in and tried to turn the camera on, but absolutely nothing happened!
I still can't turn the camera on no matter what I do. Other batteries don't work, leaving SD cards out makes no difference, using ML bootable card also does nothing, different lens attachments do nix either. There is no sign of LED/LCD life at all, the battery door switch has been tested and works correctly. The only sign of life is that the battery does actually go down if I leave it in the camera for a while, so something may be happening internally, just nothing under control of the user!

The internal on-board rechargeable battery also seems to be ok. Don't know that it actually went flat,  but I understand it is recharged off the main battery? So if it did get low, it would not have been able to recharge before I tried to re-use the camera. It is currently reading 2.88v. It has since been briefly removed and reinstalled in an attempt to 'reset' things (but I don't know if it has really done that though).

My 70D ML-related question is this:-

Is there any chance that the fact that I uninstalled ML and then left the camera basically without any power for some time,  that certain critical battery-backed memory may have lost/corrupted it's contents? Could this have put critical boot flags in the camera in an incorrect state such that the boot loader sequence is no longer being run?

Just wanting to eliminate this as a possibility before I finally resign myself to the fact that my 70D may have became the latest addition to the queue of other 70Ds that have been reported as failing inexplicably to the extent that the only recourse is to replace the motherboard. (eg see http://community.usa.canon.com/t5/EOS/70D-wont-turn-on/td-p/163122).

Although I guess unless there is a tool out there that would allow me to  get control of the boot-process again so that corrupted flags/memory locations could be re-instated, I guess I'm probably up for a mother board replacement whatever the cause is (i.e failed hardware or corrupted volatile memory/firmware) ??

FWIW, while I was inside the camera body checking the backup battery, I did notice an unused connector which may be a JTAG port?

Look for MacBoot.

http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/macboot/macboot.html

Nikfreak/Nanomad (if you're back), please check your PMs for a message from me.

I've been doing a bit of work on analysing the 70D ROMs which I hope will be useful to help someone move things along.

Let me know if any questions.

I'm seeing the same in the 70D firmware. Haven't quite finished analysing it yet, but it's looking like if you set the right flag in the Bootflags area (F8000000?) (like you do for F8000004 to get the camera to boot an autoexec.bin off the memory card) the code will branch to an area where the Factory Adjust menu is set up.

So, crafting a special .FIR that sets the Factory Adjustment (?) mode flag is probably the way in, but I'm guessing.

Nikfreak. PM me once you get a camera file dump done, and  I can hopefully share a few learnings from my slow (and seems like small) progress so far in teasing out the 70Ds secrets! 

Ok, got past that by setting in Makefile.user:

  PYTHON=python2.7

Installed montage with "sudo port install montage" but still:

  make docq
  cd /Users/steve/magic-lantern/platform/all; make docq
  cd ../../doc && RST2LATEX=rst2latex.py python2.7 mkdoc.py
  sh: montage: command not found
  make[1]: *** [docq] Error 1
  make: *** [docq] Error 2

I had this problem on my OSX Mavericks MacBookPro too, and solved it by installing ImageMagick and Python (see http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php#macosx and http://astrofrog.github.io/macports-python/).

I then ran into more issues (e.g. missing MnSymbols.sy fonts), and resolved this using info found at http://codealamode.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/installing-minionpro-for-latex-on-mac.html.

I'm now a lot closer to getting a fully error-free ML 'make docq' or 'make docs' compile finished, but still have at least one more issue to fix. ("! LaTeX Error: File `titlesec.sty' not found.").

Seems that a lot more persistence than should be necessary is needed!

Part of my problem (I think) is that I haven't found a complete (-enough) description anywhere of what the detailed pre-requisites for setting up a successful dev environment are. Some authors have described what they did to get theirs going, but I'm not aware of anything that documents exactly what is assumed to be loaded/running from the outset? Anyone who knows what that is and can spare time to write it up could save other would-be devs some time to get themselves going!? Having said that, it has been an instructive, if time-consuming, way of learning!

I had this problem on my OSX Mavericks MacBookPro too, and solved it by installing Python and ImageMagick under MacPorts (see http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php#macosx and http://astrofrog.github.io/macports-python/).

I then ran into more issues (e.g. missing MnSymbols.sy fonts), and resolved this using info found at http://codealamode.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/installing-minionpro-for-latex-on-mac.html.

I'm now a lot closer to getting a fully error-free ML 'make docq' or 'make docs' compile finished, but still have at least one more issue to fix. ("! LaTeX Error: File `titlesec.sty' not found.").

Seems that a lot more persistence than should be necessary is needed!

Part of my problem (I think) is that I haven't found a complete (-enough) description anywhere of what the detailed pre-requisites for setting up a successful dev environment are. Some authors have described what they did to get theirs going, but I'm not aware of anything that documents exactly what is assumed to be loaded/running from the outset? Anyone who knows what that is and can spare time to write it up could save other would-be devs some time to get themselves going!? Having said that, it has been an instructive, if time-consuming, way of learning!