Pinecil v1 brick

[korzhan]

I loaded the firmware into the soldering iron in bin format instead of dfu. Now I'm getting a black screen, flashing it doesn't help. Help me please.

[Ralim]

Hello,
Can you please provide a lot more detail; including what files, and tools you used?

You can't hard brick a pinecil; the DFU is burner into the silicon. So this just suggests a bad flash or a flash of the wrong firmware.

[ia]

Interesting.

I get an error message when flashing the firmware:

It seems it goes well until this moment:

Cannot open DFU device 28e9:0189 found on devnum 6 (LIBUSB_ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED)

What version of Windows do you have exactly? 10?

TL;DR: basic googling tells me that you may need to install WinUSB driver (or some libusbK or libusb0) to make Pineflash working.

Pineflash using dfu-util which using libusb - this is a 3rd party library to access USB devices. However, like it mentioned here & here, libusb under Windows is OK to get access to connected usb devices and even to get information about them. And these lines from the output is a proof that it works:

Match vendor ID from file: 28e9
Match product ID from file: 0189

But it seems libusb is not capable in writing/sending data to a usb device under Windows [10] for some reason properly so to do that you need additional drivers.

In fact, it may be a possible minor issue of Pineflash version for Windows not mentioning this case in their instructions/HOWTO if it's the case.

And here is the more detailed instruction from libusb project of how to install libusb-compatible drivers on Windows to make the library working properly under Windows.

P.S. I don't even own Pinecil nor have Windows 10 on my hands right now so I may be wrong, just googled error and re-told the results :)

[korzhan]

I installed the drivers and now the firmware is loaded successfully into the soldering iron. But it's still a brick and won't start.

Pineflash v0.5.3 Windows
PineFlash: Versions successfully fetched.
Pineflash: Pinecil detected
PineFlash: Download of Language Info Complete.
PineFlash: Downloading Firmware Pinecil v2.21.
PineFlash: Download Complete.
PineFlash: File extracted successfully
PineFlash: Attempting to flash Pinecil with the firmware C:\Users\Korzhan\AppData\Local\Temp\v2.21-Pinecil\Pinecil_EN.dfu
Dfu-Util: dfu-util 0.11

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2021 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to http://sourceforge.net/p/dfu-util/tickets/

Match vendor ID from file: 28e9
Match product ID from file: 0189
Multiple alternate interfaces for DfuSe file
Opening DFU capable USB device...
Device ID 28e9:0189
Device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Interface #1 ...
Determining device status...
DFU state(2) = dfuIDLE, status(0) = No error condition is present
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 2048
DfuSe interface name: "Option Bytes  "
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash  "
Found GD32VF103, which reports a bad page size and count for its internal memory.
Fixed layout based on part number: page size 1024, count 128.
File contains 1 DFU images
Parsing DFU image 1
Target name: ST...
Image for alternate setting 0, (1 elements, total size = 53648)
Setting Alternate Interface #0 ...
Parsing element 1, address = 0x08000000, size = 53640

Erase     [                         ]   0%            0 bytes
Erase     [                         ]   0%            0 bytes
Erase     [=                        ]   7%         4096 bytes
Erase     [==                       ]  11%         6144 bytes
Erase     [===                      ]  15%         8192 bytes
Erase     [====                     ]  19%        10240 bytes
Erase     [=====                    ]  22%        12288 bytes
Erase     [======                   ]  26%        14336 bytes
Erase     [=======                  ]  30%        16384 bytes
Erase     [========                 ]  34%        18432 bytes
Erase     [=========                ]  38%        20480 bytes
Erase     [==========               ]  41%        22528 bytes
Erase     [===========              ]  45%        24576 bytes
Erase     [============             ]  49%        26624 bytes
Erase     [=============            ]  53%        28672 bytes
Erase     [==============           ]  57%        30720 bytes
Erase     [===============          ]  61%        32768 bytes
Erase     [================         ]  64%        34816 bytes
Erase     [=================        ]  68%        36864 bytes
Erase     [==================       ]  72%        38912 bytes
Erase     [===================      ]  76%        40960 bytes
Erase     [====================     ]  80%        43008 bytes
Erase     [=====================    ]  87%        47104 bytes
Erase     [======================   ]  91%        49152 bytes
Erase     [=======================  ]  95%        51200 bytes
Erase     [======================== ]  99%        53248 bytes
Erase     [=========================] 100%        53640 bytes
Erase    done.
Download  [                         ]   0%            0 bytes
Download  [=                        ]   7%         4096 bytes
Download  [==                       ]  11%         6144 bytes
Download  [===                      ]  15%         8192 bytes
Download  [====                     ]  19%        10240 bytes
Download  [=====                    ]  22%        12288 bytes
Download  [======                   ]  26%        14336 bytes
Download  [=======                  ]  30%        16384 bytes
Download  [========                 ]  34%        18432 bytes
Download  [=========                ]  38%        20480 bytes
Download  [==========               ]  41%        22528 bytes
Download  [===========              ]  45%        24576 bytes
Download  [============             ]  49%        26624 bytes
Download  [=============            ]  53%        28672 bytes
Download  [==============           ]  57%        30720 bytes
Download  [===============          ]  61%        32768 bytes
Download  [================         ]  64%        34816 bytes
Download  [=================        ]  68%        36864 bytes
Download  [==================       ]  72%        38912 bytes
Download  [===================      ]  76%        40960 bytes
Download  [====================     ]  80%        43008 bytes
Download  [=====================    ]  87%        47104 bytes
Download  [======================   ]  91%        49152 bytes
Download  [=======================  ]  95%        51200 bytes
Download  [======================== ]  99%        53248 bytes
Download  [=========================] 100%        53640 bytes
Download done.
Done parsing DfuSe file

[ia]

But it's still a brick and won't start.

Now it starts to look like this issue. Let me go a little back in this conversation.

I bought the soldering iron on the off-site Pine.

When did you buy it exactly? As far as I've heard, the first revision aka PinecilV1 has been discontinued for sale by Pine about year ago. So, just to be clear & to make sure: are you sure that you have PinecilV1 and not PinecilV2? Yours comes with blue rubber holder, not green one, right?

But according to this line in the logs:

Found GD32VF103, which reports a bad page size and count for its internal memory.

it's indeed PinecilV1.

At least your device seems flashable so maybe just like it was suggested for the issue above but here, could you try to flash release of version 2.20 first? Maybe it will help, maybe it won't. That's what I would do myself anyway - just try to use previous stable release build to see what happen :(

[korzhan]

I bought the soldering iron on the off-site https://pine64.com.
The first version with a blue handle.
I bought it November 28, 2021.
I tried installing firmware up to 2.16v. No result.

[ia]

Oookay, then it looks like another duplicate.
Unfortunately, it seems more than couple users had this issue in the past so it may be it. Discussion above looks very interesting.

TL;DR:

• OLED screen should be resoldered (without replacing)
• OLED screen should be replaced

To check the latter, you can unplug your Pinecil after flashing from PC, plug it to reliable power source (just be very careful since tip may be hot), press "+" a few times like you're increasing temperature and put solder on the tip - if solder will be melting, then it's just OLED itself and it should be replaced.

Otherwise, maybe if you disassemble Pinecil and provide photos of soldering joints of OLED cable, more experienced people could tell you if it's the issue (just like in the thread above).

See this replies in particular for more details: 1 2 3 4 5

Sorry to tell you bad news :(