How to revive a Semi-Bricked CnM Minibook

[Simon19]

First off I'm new here, so hello I'm the new kid

I've dropped a BIG clannger, I've sorta bricked my CnM Minibook, Stupid I know. I bought the unit off ebay and I wanted to restore it to it's factory setup as the previous owner had left all their stuff on it, Files, emails, wireless keys, 3G settings, Half a film. So I wanted a complete wipe, I also noticed there was a non standard app on it. xTerm, I know it's easy to install and its damn useful.

Now here's where ive went wrong. I found a link that gives you a PDF from CnM, and it lists the recovery / wipe procedure. I don't know if this is preventing me from unbricking, there is two recovery options.

- A one for a CnM Minibook with serial number starting with "HCK..." but mine is a "HKC..." it may just be a typo I dont know.
- A one for CnMBooks with S/N with SN to begin. this one is irellevant.

So i got the HCK and stuck it on an SD card got to the F3 Bit and got the infamous no found error.

Then I noticed U-disk was also mentioned at the top so I proceeded to use a USB stick, what a mistake. But it did find the file and format the flash. then gave up.

Recovery
...open input file: No such file or directory
real    0m 0.01s
user    0m 0.01s
sys    0m 0.01s
Syncing... Please wait for a moment
 finished

Thats what I got on the screen.

Now I just get the v70 CnM bootscreen. I can upgrade and downgrade the kernal no bother with the SD card F3 recovery couldn't read. The SD card is a Sandisk 1GB card, Branded Wii for some reason or another. So its a semi-decent brand.

So how do I get myself out of this pickle?
I've got a working Kernal
I've got a workink F3 Recovery.
Ideally I would like to get back to the CnM OS first then 3MX or debian.

I've searched High and low round here and there doesn't seem to be any CnM specific answers.

Could a bootable SD be an option? I've seen that some kernals accept F2 as mounting the sd as the nand

And My unit is a 1GB flash unit, judging by what was said at the bottom of the file manager.

Regards, Simon

[T_Nut]

Hi
Well i have  CnMBook also when i do a recovery on mine its always done on sd card with no problems.
Are putting the recovery image on sd as root just the image no files.the standard cnm image is a rec. and the cnmbook is 2gig  2x 1gig so you should have it i think its named as extended !
Hope this helps
Many Thanks
Andrew

[Simon19]

T_Nut, you are a ledgend! Thats why I couldn't restore! CnM's recovery guide is wrong, you only need the .rec file in. not the minifs.img! if there was a thanks button I would have hit it, sadly there aint.

Again many thanks!

EDIT: is there any way to get 3MX on these machines? the ones that use .rec files rather than .img's? I've had a poke around other forums and nothing has sprung up.

EDIT 2: I should really try harder. http://linuxlaptopforum.ark2webdesign.co.uk/index.php?topic=473.0

[T_Nut]

Hi
What i have is the skytone kernel on mine with that kernel you get a different start up screen saying skytone not the cnmbook one and the best for me is screen brightness control FN+F4 dimmer FN+F5 brighter
and also it works with img files so anything wicknix has done works with all 3MX's.
Can't find link to kernel. Simon19 PM your email address i'll dig it out and send.
The same recovery procedure as well. Hope this helps.
Many Thanks
Andrew 

[Simon19]

Hi
What i have is the skytone kernel on mine with that kernel you get a different start up screen saying skytone not the cnmbook one and the best for me is screen brightness control FN+F4 dimmer FN+F5 brighter

isn't the F3 recocery procedure minifs.img on a different partition, Not the kernal?

[T_Nut]

Hi
Well i don't know anything about the minifs.img !!
The only way i could get 3mx on the cnmbook was by changing the kernel which is uimage to the skytone one because the cnm one did not reconise the img. Once you have skytone kernel on then you can put 3mx on it . I did all this using the standard recovery procedure.  To flash kernel on is left shift+fn+ctrl  i think !! to put img on is F3. Hope this help's 
Many Thanks
Andrew

PS when putting img on make sure to format to delete everthing other wise you might end up with more problems.

[Simon19]

To update the kernal on my CnM it was [Left Shift + Fn + F1] That was going from v64 to v70 and back and forth as CnM's customer support aimlessly to me to.  My Minibook's serial starts with HKC does yours or is it SN?

Right ill pm you my email for if you find the skytone kernal.

[T_Nut]

Hi
First thing cant find kernel must of lost it with hard drive going down   But i have found the website the link   http://projects.kwaak.net/twiki/bin/view/Epc700/KernelBacklight   
Serial number on the bottom of mine CNM/NB/MB/7B/E  How old is your's then mine's about 2yrs
confused yet cos i was when i got mine  Hope this helps.
Many Thanks
Andrew

[Simon19]

I really don't know how old it is, it was an ebay job. Looks like mine is the same model. the "Serial" is most likely the model.  aye ill have a look at that kernal.

[wicknix]

You can boot 3MX-Ultra from SD card using the latest 2.6 kernel if you dont want to wipe out whatever you have installed internally.
http://linuxlaptopforum.ark2webdesign.co.uk/index.php/topic,962.0.html

If you'd like to host any of the 3MX or anOS files to keep them from fading away.... i'm all for it.
The only really relevant ones would be:
3MX-Ultra3 for 2.6 kernel http://filefactory.com/file/ca774a0/n/3MX-Ultra3-2.6kernel-rootfs.tar.bz2
3MX-Ultra3 for 2.4 kernel http://www.filefactory.com/file/b1ffcea/n/Recovery_3MX-Ultra3.img
AnOS-v3 for 2.6 kernel http://filefactory.com/file/ca798be/n/anOS-2.6kernel-rootfs.v3.tar.bz2
AnOS-v4 for 2.4 kernel http://filefactory.com/file/ca90b43/n/Recovery_anOS-2.4kernel-rootfs.v4.img

Anything else is out of date. My debian etch and lenny download links seem dead also. Maybe somebody still has the files and could upload or email them to you.

Cheers

[T_Nut]

Hi
The one i posted is still active from here  http://www.mediafire.com/?nxbxxxrv624anch
thats debian lenny rootfs
Many Thanks
Andrew

[Simon19]

Sorry, I can't do it, fisrts my bandwith sucks and theres too many legal implications if somthing goes wrong!