[FIXED]7D dead....

[fredvr]

Hi

I probably did something which screwed up my 7D..

Last week I installed a nightly build and saw the dual ISO module was not included (anymore?).  Because for me this is an important feature I decided to not use ML on my 7D until there seems to be a bot more progress and stick to my 5d3 for now.  (regarding to ML)

I upgraded to firmware 2.0.5., which seems to finish normally, but after the first next boot the 7D appears to be completely dead.       

Tried several thing like hard reset (taking both batteries out for a while, checking the switch in the CF compartment etc) 
The 7d came to live again once though,  so I thought everything was back to normal again. But that was the very last time. After that, whatever I did, it stayed completely dead and won;t turn on. The only thing I see is the led on the front is a little flash when inserting the battery. That's all.

The only thing I can think of is the bootflag which I (of course) should have disabled before upgrading the firmware is causing this.

Someone any idea how to get the 7D started again..?  This is pretty frustrating..

Fred

[ItsMeLenny]

Are the batteries fully charged?

[a1ex]

Can you start it without card?

[fredvr]

hm, yep

tried more batteries and tested those in my 5d first.   (not the coin cell though. But I can't believe this battery got exhausted at exact the same time I did the fw upgrade..)

Tried to start the camera without mem.card also a few times. The only one time the camera did boot was without this card. but after opening the door to add the card it went down of course because of the switch and it never came back again.
 

[a1ex]

Works without card, or not?

[fredvr]

only one time. not now

[a1ex]

After it booted without card, what exactly did you do?

Did you try start the camera, running 2.0.5, with the autoexec.bin for 2.0.3? Or did you start it with bootflag enabled on the card, but without ML files? Or both?

Did you remove the battery after each failed startup attempt?

[fredvr]

After it booted without card, what exactly did you do?

I opened the card door (which made it shutdown again)

Did you try start the camera, running 2.0.5, with the autoexec.bin for 2.0.3?

yes (the unchanged ML card was still in the camera, except the 2.0.5 firmware file was added to do the upgrade)

did you start it with bootflag enabled on the card

yes (the unchanged ML card was still in the camera, except the 2.0.5 firmware file was added to do the upgrade)

without ML files

Both. I removed them later from the card after some retries

Did you remove the battery after each failed startup attempt

I did in 80% of the cases and tried several combinations:
- only normal battery removed
- only coin cell removed
- normal battery + coin cell  removed
- above with and without lens attached
- above with camera alternately switched to 'on' and 'off'  during removal 

sometimes I waited at least 10-15minutes before inserting the battery(s)  again. Last time about 7hrs without batt.

[a1ex]

At startup, ML checks the firmware version (computes a checksum), and if it doesn't match, it refuses to boot. On most cameras, the LED keeps blinking, but on 7D, I think the camera simply locks up when trying to do that (because it expects communication between the two processors).

I can upgrade my 7D to 2.0.5 to check whether this safeguard works properly. If I'll brick mine in the same way, I'll be able to troubleshoot it locally (and maybe learn how to reflash it, but I hope it won't be needed). Just let me know the exact steps I should follow.

[fredvr]

thanks Alex. I hope you are able to brick your 7d too.......   

- I downloaded the latest build 7d.203  probably from 2014-06-26   
     (not sure if it was the one from 26-6 or a few days earlier. When it's relevant for you I have to check that tonight)
     Just copied the content to the cfcard

- did the firmware update using the 7D menu to load ML and after that rebooted the camera

- I selected a few modules in the ML menu and rebooted the camera to load the modules
  not 100% sure which modules I picked   (of course not able to check this now..)
  As I can remember: the explorer module(s), the raw video related modules, ETTR and silent mirror

- played a few times with the ettr and silent mirror features to see the results

- because dual_iso seems to be no longer part of ML on the 7D (at least it was not in this build) I decided to revert to the normal 7d v2.0.5 firmware and use ML only on the 5d3.

- I downloaded the 7d firmware and copied the "7D000205.fir" file on the card which still had the ML files on it.

- in the 7D menu I choosed for the firmware upgrade to 7d205
  this proces took a few minutes which ended with the message the update from 2.0.3 to 2.0.5 was succesfull

- next I tried to reboot the camera which wasn't possible anymore

There is one more thing:
After the camera came up once I had to edit the time/date because of the hard reset by removing the coin cell.
In this whole process I'm pretty sure (..) I saw somewhere the camera still mentioned firmware 2.0.3. even this was hapening after the upgrade. Unfortunately I didn;t pay to much attention to this at that time because I was more focussed on the process of getting the thing up and running again.

btw.: I really appreciate your effort to help me with this!
I also understand all details are very important to have an indication what might have happened.  The problem is I wasn't prepared for running into problems at all and switching firmware was not the first time for me. never had any problem. So it's a bit hard to reproduce what exactly happened  step by step in all detail. I know I should have wiped out ML completely from that card before upgrading the canon firmware.

[a1ex]

Alright. First I've checked if the firmware signature check works properly. Changed SIG_7D_203 to some other value => camera refused to boot with ML, it simply locked up. Took battery out, took card out, put battery back in, camera alive.

This is good - ML refuses to boot on a wrong firmware version.

I don't think the build version is relevant, because the latest changes were minor. So, went back to stock ML (compiled from unified), added 7D000205.FIR (from Canon Europe) and started into ML. Loaded some modules, all fine.

Then I went to Firmware Update (while ML was loaded) and updated from 203 to 205. Battery was around 60%, and the process took about 3 minutes.

Of course, after the process finished, I clicked OK, and the camera turned off right away. It could not boot any more, because ML found a different firmware version and went into an infinite loop (since there's not much else to do if you know nothing about the hardware you are running on).

Removed card, removed battery, put battery back, camera started and asked for date/time. Hit OK, it was up and running (of course, saying "no card").

Back to 2.0.3, ML up and running again.

So, the firmware checksum is working, and I don't know how to reproduce the problem. I can try to fix the LED blinking though.

[fredvr]

thnx Alex and glad to hear your machine is still alive!

I will have to play a bit around again this evening and maybe i'm able to get it going once more.

First I will low level formate the card and only the 7d205.fir file on it.
If it will boot I will update the firmware update more to be 100% sure this is done correctly.
When it doesn't however there is probably not much more I can do than visiting canon...

I can try to fix the LED blinking though

??

[a1ex]

    I can try to fix the LED blinking though

On most cameras, the LED keeps blinking, but on 7D, I think the camera simply locks up when trying to do that

I had no success yet (the camera either shuts down cleanly after a split-second, or locks up, depending on what signal I'm sending to the master CPU), but found something interesting. After it locks up, I remove the battery and the card, and when I put back the battery, the front light blinks for a split-second. That's unusual, no other camera does that, to my knowledge.

So, it might be a failed communication between the master and the slave CPU (just a guess).

[Pelican]

After the camera came up once I had to edit the time/date because of the hard reset by removing the coin cell.

You have to edit the time/date every time when a fw update happens since Canon put the time zone settings to the firmware (2.0.0).
(The fw update script has an  "EVP_ResetCalendar" line.)

[fredvr]

Good news to report!

I did a low level format of the card and checked with EOScard if it was really 'clean'. I tried to power the camera still without succes though. removed battery, insert battery, power on: no result.  But after a few retries it suddenly came to live and from that point it looks like it's functioning normal again. I now can power it on and off without any surprises anymore.

Still strange to me because why wasn't it booting without a card inserted when I tried this several times before... But I'm verry happy any way it ends like this and many thanks for your excellent support.   

You have to edit the time/date every time when a fw update happens since Canon put the time zone settings to the firmware (2.0.0).

I was under the impression that removing both batteries is causing a hard reset. I would expect that everything would revert to factory settings at that time. Now it's working again I see my copyright information is still all there. So it seems that some information is still stored in the camera and a hard reset doesn't imply flushing all data/settings. 

when I put back the battery, the front light blinks for a split-seco

Now it's working again the led behaviour is still the same: when I insert the battery it flashes for a split sec. My 5d3 does exactly the same though. The big difference is that on the 7d  the led is on the frontside so I never noticed this before. On the 5d3 it's on the back and I can see it always blink when replacing batteries.

[a1ex]

Yay!

I've never seen the front LED flashing on 5D3 (I don't even know what color it is...)

That little battery is only for the clock, to my knowledge.

[fredvr]

it's red and not a front but back LED.. 

[a1ex]

That's a different issue, explained here: www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=1455