[ale] Unhalfbricking

[Geoffrey Myers]

arxaaron wrote:
>> And hey Aaron, I hope you're still holding one or two 'bricked'
>> Kuro-pros.  I'll be glad to apply this hack and at least see what is
>> going on in there?
> 
> Hey, Charles:
> 
> Since you've gone through all the trouble of hacking these
> Kuro Box things down to the serial connection headers, serial
> voltages, baud rate and parity (see below), please feel free to
> come and and pick up the 2 bricks I still have here.  If you can
> salvage them, they're yours to do with what you will!
> 
> And man, I gotta tell you, you've got this years ALE prize for
> "Most Tenacious Hacker of Eclectic Gadgets " in the bag!  :-)

Amen on that one.  I've played with mine off and on since I got it, but 
never was able to get anything working.  I'm keeping Charle's link to 
give it a go when I have more time to play.

Thanks Charles. ;)

> 
> peace
> aaron
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2011/03/12, at 11:47 , Charles Shapiro wrote:
> 
>> (With Apologies to Fairport Convention )
>>
>> It is in fact possible to get a console login on a Kuro-Box Pro as
>> given away this winter at various ALE functions.
>> You merely have to build a Sparkfun RS232 Level Shifter kit (
>> http://www.sparkfun.com/products/133 ), solder a 4-pin PCB header onto
>> the daughterboard as described in the Kuro-Box wiki (
>> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/buffalo/kuroboxpro/serial.html ),
>> and connect the shfiter board to the header.  Then you can plug a
>> really old computer with serial port into the DB9 side of your level
>> shifter.  Communication params are 115200, 8-N-1 .  The reason for the
>> level shifter is that the kuro-box is doing serial communications at
>> 3.3v, rather than the RS232 standard of 5-12V.  So you need the level
>> shifter board to match it up with a PC comm port.  Don't make the
>> mistake of misunderstanding the preliminary test instructions on the
>> shifter board kit and thinking it's broken; power for the shifter
>> comes from the 4-wire side, not the DB9 side.
>>
>> The console login allows you to log in as root and debug even
>> 'bricked' kuroboxen, since you have full 2-way communication.  I am
>> currently trying to source more 4-pin male PCB headers; Fry's does not
>> seem to have them.  Perhaps ACK Radio can help me out on this?
>>
>> And hey Aaron, I hope you're still holding one or two 'bricked'
>> Kuro-pros.  I'll be glad to apply this hack and at least see what is
>> going on in there?  Retail on this thing is, like, $169.  It seems a
>> shame to throw 'em out just 'cause the ethernet port isn't getting
>> initted. Put a $50 hard drive in one of these and you have a pretty
>> dandy little headless linux box.
>>
>> I've also discovered that the kuro-box actually keeps her static
>> ethernet parameters in two different places.  That may be why changing
>> it in only one place stops networking.
>>
>> -- CHS
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-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson