Canon EOS M Bricked!

[procopy]

Gents, I need help with my bricked EOS M. I wrote yesterday in the facebook group but will also post here, as I'm getting slightly desperate now.

The story is after shooting 23 clips, I was switching wind attenuator off and the on when the camera powered down leaving solid orange light lit. Long story short, dozens of power ups and downs, lens, card and battery swaps, there are two behaviours the camera would exhibit:

when the card is in the camera
- green will blink few times like during a normal power up but the screen will never get powered, connecting an external monitor would show no signal
- connecting the camera to PC via cable does not work at all

when the card is not in the camera
- green will blink indefinitely and screen will power up but show nothing on it, connecting an external monitor shows current mode --- or --- Err 70 will be displayed
- connecting the camera to PC via cable works as intended but EOS Utility can't perform firmware update as it needs card in the camera

At the time of the incident, I was using Danne's January build. After hours of browsing, I ended up finding this topic, which seems to sum up what's going on.

I tried just about everything but nothing would work if there is card in the camera. I can't believe there is no way to perform a hard reset or flash the camera using the PC as firmware medium or, I don't know, using some low level command line tool or something. 

[Walter Schulz]

@Mod: Please move procopy's post to the Camera Emergency department.
@Procopy: ttps://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=2296.0
Copy diagnostic autoexec.bin to card. Backup existing autoexec.bin first.

[procopy]

All right, managed to prepare a new card with EOScard. This is what rom dump autoexec looks like.



Apparently it did not save a log file. Also, I'm not sure which startup log zip to install, as there is no EOS M specific and what do I do next?

[Danne]

@a1ex. One of your autoexe.bin files might fix this which fixed my and dfort soft brick last time?

[Walter Schulz]

@procopy: Make sure card isn't write protected. If there is a smaller card you may want to use this one. Or create a smaller partition.

[procopy]

Ok, used 8 GB card and it worked.

[Walter Schulz]

Backup diagnostic autoexec.bin. Copy extracted nightly build content to card.
Remove battery.
Insert card.
Insert battery.
Close compartment lid.

Report back.

[procopy]

Result is I got my initial condition exactly replicated - steady orange light constantly lit, right after closing the lid. On power up, it will blink green few times while orange stays lit. No screen, no signs of life.

[procopy]

Guys, you are fucking saints! Thank you so much! All my <3

[Danne]

Great!
Op used a fix a1ex prepped for me and dfort a while ago. Thanks for that.

[IDA_ML]

Procopy,

Could you please share with us what exactly you did, step by step,  to unbrick your camera?  This will help other people unbrick their cameras if they end up in a situation like yours.  Thanks.

[Danne]

It's info shared before in other posts fixing other eosm cameras. It's an autoexe.bin file restoring camera properties. Exactly how, only a1ex knows.

[a1ex]

Could you please share with us what exactly you did, step by step,  to unbrick your camera?  This will help other people unbrick their cameras if they end up in a situation like yours.  Thanks.

When you go to a doctor, do you ask him for some aspirin (or worse, antibiotic), or you'd rather get a diagnostic first?

Same here. ERR70 covers over 1000 different conditions. If the autoexec.bin from Danne worked, it means the camera happened to have the same problem (video settings, i.e. PROP_VIDEO MODE, messed up, possibly by the same code as before). Otherwise, that autoexec would have simply restored the video mode settings to some sane defaults, unlikely (but possible!) to cause further damage.

There is an edge case, though. If the property data structures were messed up (it happened in the past), this approach could have resulted in further (unpredictable) damage. If that recovery procedure was ran unsuccessfully several times, it might have eventually overwritten all of the backup copies of the property blocks in ROM (unconfirmed hypothesis), making the recovery even more difficult.

To troubleshoot cameras that don't boot, after running the portable ROM dumper, I recommend trying to get an error log first, with one of these builds:
https://builds.magiclantern.fm/jenkins/view/Experiments/job/startup-log/
https://builds.magiclantern.fm/jenkins/view/Experiments/job/startup-log-mpu/

After seeing the error, we can see what exactly is wrong, and what fix to apply. Otherwise, I don't recommend trying various fixes blindly.

[IDA_ML]

Thanks a lot for this important clarification, A1ex!

[tabbynoodles]

I got the same issue Err 70 without the card. I've used the last build of @Danne EOSM crop_rec_4k_mlv_snd_raw_only_2021Jun26.EOSM202.zip, did the autoexec.bin rom dumper and it dumps successfully

Portable Display Test Log

Code Select Expand


  Magic Lantern Rescue
----------------------------
- Model ID: 0x331 M
- Camera model: ???
- Firmware version: 2.0.2 / 9.9.8 B8(3a)
- IMG naming: 100?????/IMG_1333.JPG
- User PS: CineStyle CineBooster LightForm C
- Boot flags: FIR=0 BOOT=-1 RAM=-1 UPD=-1
- ROMBASEADDR: 0xFF0C0000
- DONE!


Rom Dumper Log:

Code Select Expand


  Magic Lantern Rescue
----------------------------
- Model ID: 0x331 M
- Camera model: ???
- Firmware version: 2.0.2 / 9.9.8 B8(3a)
- IMG naming: 100?????/IMG_1333.JPG
- User PS: CineStyle CineBooster LightForm C
- Boot flags: FIR=0 BOOT=-1 RAM=-1 UPD=-1
- ROMBASEADDR: 0xFF0C0000
- card_bootflags 10a63c
- boot_read/write_sector 10aec8 10afbc
- 102798 Card init => 2
- Dumping ROM0... 100%
- MD5: 00fb35d35a716ad9341967fd5d54aab8
- Dumping ROM1... 100%
- MD5: 81ed458721f0b56f41ff5b6aac98727a
- 0: \n**** SROM(SIO%d) Menu ****\n
- 107c64: \n**** SROM Menu ****\n
- 107B4C: tag c022c000
- sf_init 107B48
- 10717c: Read Address[0x%06x-0x%06x]:0x
- 106A94: tag c0820000
- sf_command_sio 106A44
- Reading serial flash... 100%
- Writing SFDATA.BIN... 100%
- MD5: d38b362303c1d32873c766ebc06b7611
- Saving RESCUE.LOG ...