[2007.2 fr] boot prolems

[Josh Thompson]

Harry,

Welcome to Openmoko community.

On Fri January 9 2009 7:45:25 pm Harry L. Lee wrote:
> however I cannot successfully press and hold aux then press power to get to
> the boot menu.
>
> i'm pretty creative about solving you only have one hand problems, but i
> haven't been able to beat this one. before you try to tell me "just do
> this", pleas try your method with your left (more accurately, non-dominant)
> hand in its pocket (you'd be amazed how many things you use both for
> without realizing.

I had to work on this on for a bit.  I've pressed both buttons many times when 
holding the FR in my left hand.  The button orientation doesn't work out as 
well for that when I switch it to my right hand.  That is, until I realized 
turning it over would orient the buttons the same way as if it were in my 
left hand.

So, give this a try.  Hold the FR in your hand with the screen facing away 
from you (ie, you are looking right at the "openmoko" written on the back) 
with your thumb on the AUX button and all 4 fingers basically next to each 
other on the other side (side with the power button).  When I hold it that 
way, my ring finger naturally ends up on the power button.  Then, press and 
hold the AUX button with your thumb and then press the power button for about 
2 seconds.  Then, you should be able to run dfu-util.  Also, I realized I 
could flip my hand over while holding it this way and still see a bit of the 
screen to know when I had held the buttons long enough.

> it seems there should be a relatively simple software based solution to
> this problem. the boot menu is just a program, somewhere (I assume in what
> a dinosaur like me would think of as) the computer's memory space. it would
> seem if you knew where it was, you could use a debugger to jump to that
> location and begin execution. it would seem a shell script could accomplish
> that, or even a small binary executable. if some om zen master could either
> point out why that wouldn't work, or whip up the appropiate tool, i''d be
> eternally grateful.

That's the kind of thinking I like to see!  :)  Though, I have no idea how to 
go about doing this.

Josh