Bricked Pluto recovery using JTAG ?

[G4WIM]

Hi,
I've been given a bricked Pluto to look at / recover if possible.

I thought it'd be a simple DFU operation but in this case the USB port is not recognised at all, also LED1 is lit dimly due to the FPGA chip control pin not being defined thus leading me to suspect the Xilinx FPGA chip is corrupted.

I thinking it may respond to JTAG into the FPGA directly to recover functionality and make the USB port work again.
All power supplies are good and nothing is getting hot !

Question - has anyone succesfully JTAG'd a Pluto back to life and if so what was the process ?

73 Tim

[Pa3fbx]

Hi Tim.

First, are you sure you just briked him or is he really dead.

First steps is get an extra 5 volt adapter en connect it to the 2nd usb port (power in)
second step is to connect the USB again and whatch the LED"s...

posible 1: just faint blue... no blinking.. (yes we have power but no bootup, your bricked)
possible2: blue blinking.. you have a working pluto...
possible3: no LED( your power converter inside the pluto is dead...)

OK lets assume you have really brickked the thing...
On analog wiki there is a complete discription how to prceed...
https://wiki.analog.com/university/tool ... re?s[]=dfu

Reconnect the center USB with paperclip button pressed...
leave the power usb connected..
Your pluto starts with bright blue led (not blinking)
your compter shout recognise the DFU device..

Find the dfu firmware as well ass the batch files and dfu -utills..
nevermind the m2k data...(its not for pluto)
Change the batsch files to your needs... (you really must)

run the boot.dfu and than pluto.dfu

After this ( each procedure takes a few minuts.). you should get a bright blinking led...

If not, cry and scream for help..... (you might not be the right programmer )
or you can start with this last part now....

I have done this now at leased 5 times an got also 3 dead pluto's back to life so there is light at the end of the tunnel...

good luck...

73es
Benno, PA3FBX.

PS. If notthing works your only a teamviewer session away from me...

[DL1BJV]

Hi Tim,

I successfully 'unbricked' a Pluto for a local radio amateur last Saturday showing similar symptoms.

Benno, PA3FBX has given you a detailed description which will lead to recovery.

I have also found the following useful information which might be helpfull:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microw ... to-sdr/75/

Good luck....

73 Wolfgang

[G4WIM]

Hi guys,

thanks for the links etc struggling but made a bit of progress.

I can get it into dfu mode but it will only accept uboot-env.dfu then pluto.dfu at which point I have a basic working Pluto again.

It will not accept boot.dfu as it claims no dfu device present.

Question which boot file should I be loading boot.dfu or uboot-env.dfu ?

If it's boot.dfu I wonder why it won't load it.

Having got the basic Pluto working there seems to be a problem when I load the F5oeo firmware 3112 in as much as the ip address won't work when I change them in the config.txt to match my network - still progress anyway !

edit seems the ip address gets forgotten on power cycle ?

edit seems the ip address did get updated as it now works at 192.168.2.100 as requested but the config file still shows 192.168.2.1 - very strange !

73 Tim

[g8lce]

May not be helpful but one of the things I found while trying to update the firmware in a well used Pluto and having problems was to format the Pluto's memory. This was once the Pluto had been recongnised by the Windows 10 computer. The pluto.frm update did not work when done in the usual way until the Pluto was formatted. There must have been some hidden files left before the format.
Good Luck

Martin G8LCE

[pa0esh]

I have been searching already a long time and hope that Tim or others can help. My Pluto+ (one week old) got bricked when updating firmware.
My problem is that all DFU methods don't work becuase i do not get into DFU mode. (pressing DFU while powering up)
The dfu-utils command exite with :

Code: Select all

Match vendor ID from file: 0456
Match product ID from file: b673
No DFU capable USB device available

I was able using a raspberry PICO as Xilinx emulator (see this article: https://github.com/plutoplus/plutoplus/issues/51) to get the Pluto into DFU mode (Pluto+ seen as "USB download gadget" in the Eject USB device list.) , but as soon as power is disconnected , the DFU mode is gone when reconnecting. All work done on a Windows 11 machine.

I hope i can get some help here

Erik PA0ESH