jeremycollins
Lurker
Hey ya'll I found a hard-ware workaround for a broken trackball button on the Droid Eris.
This is a last ditch resort, and though I did not damage my phone, it seems very possible to do so if you are not careful! Read the whole post before trying this.
First off my problem. So, I have a droid eris that suddenly stopped working a couple months ago while I was traveling(it took me this long to fix it). It was not rooted and had all stock apps ect on it. It could not boot past the three skateboarding droids screen. I do not know what version of android it had on it before unfortunately.
First I tried fastboot. I could get it to go into usb-fastboot mode but my bootloader was still the 1.46 S-ON variety. So fastboot could detect it but not do anything else.
Next I tried ADB. I set up Android SDK with ADB and HTC sync to maybe get the USB drivers to work on my windows XP machine, but alas no luck. ADB could never detect the device. I even tried setting up the SDK on my Ubuntu Linux machine, but once again it could not detect the Eris.
So I did what I perhaps should have done first which was to try different PB00IMG.zip files with Hboot. I downloaded the engineering leak PB00IMG.zip file and put it on the SD card(see below for where to get it from). And finally some luck! When I put the Eris into Hboot the Eris recognized the PB00IMG.zip file and loaded it! But I got stuck again because my track ball button does not work and Hboot needs the trackball to do the "action" and update the phone.
So, not having a warranty to worry about, and seemingly no other options I decided to muck around inside the eris. A button is just two points on a circuit that get momentarily connected when the button is pushed, so why not just find the points on the board and short it? It was actually quite easy.
It should go without saying though that doing this will void your warranty if any, and might destroy your phone(if you did something like shorting from the battery to some other chip ect). I also advise not to do this procedure with the phone plugged into either a computer or its charger. As the points that need to be shorted are right by the USB circuits, an acidental short from there with it plugged in could also potentially damage your phone.
Anyway here are the steps I followed:
1. Download the PB00IMG.zip, I got it from the xda post "How To Install Engineering bootloader FOR LEAK ROOTERS"
The file is called "original root rom" in the post. After downloading, rename it PB00IMG.zip
2. Put the PB00IMG.zip in the root(top) folder of you SD card.
3. Make sure your battery is fully charged. Turn the phone off and disassemble, I'm sure there are some good guides for this out there somewhere. Or you can just do this: Take the back plate off exposing the battery and SD card. Then remove the SD card(it sometimes interfered with me getting the next part of the case off) and battery. Then Take the 4 screws out of the corners of the Eris. The screws are those dumb 6 sided star type, I found a fine philips head worked fine though. Next pry the case open starting around the USB port and working upwards, I used a small flat head screwdriver for this.
4. Once you have the inner back case off you should see a big copper shield thing, the camera and some circuit boards ect. The board we are interested in is the USB/Track ball board. It is Blueish green on my Eris. It has the micro USB port on it.
5. Now we need power to run the phone so it can load the file in Hboot, so we have to attach the battery in some way so that it powers the phone. I used a zip tie and put it up against the power terminals it would normally be against anyway. I pulled the zip tie tight and booted up the phone. It should be noted that you have to be very careful not to move the battery during the procedure, especially once it starts updating as this might cause the phone to shut down in the middle of updating, which seems... maybe very bad. I avoided moving the battery by only holding on to the edges of the front portion of the case(the part with the screen in it).
6. So the next step is to power up the phone into Hboot mode(I think this is done with volume down and power pressed at the same time). Hboot checks the PB00IMG.zip file and loads it(hopefully!) and then it gives you the txt "Do you wish to begin update now?" or something and requires that you push the trackball to begin.
7. Be careful not to move the battery during this step or the next! Now you have to carefully test around with a small segment of wire or a paper clip(or a circuit bending probe made out of two old probes of a multimeter soldered together) and short various solder connections on the USB/trackball board. Do not make shorts from the battery, or its terminals on the board! The solder pads you are looking for are located on small capacitor and transistor surfance mount components(basically little square components on the board with solder points on them). These components we are located right on the other side of the board from the trackball button(the button is right under the trackball). Just to be clear we are making shorts on the side of the board that is facing up when the screen is facing down. Some of the shorts will light up the track ball LED and one will count as a trackball button push, this is the one we need. It might take a couple minutes of messing around but it is there. I'm not sure exactly which short it is because my phone had its screen facing down while doing this so don't know the one that did it.
8. Once you get that trackball buttons shorted patiently wait for the update to finish and it should ask you if you want to reboot the phone. I'm not sure if it is necessary but I short circuited it again at this point to push the trackball button again. It rebooted and the phone booted normally! I had to go through the phone set up again but that is not really a problem. And now it is 1.49.2 S-Off!
This is a last ditch resort, and though I did not damage my phone, it seems very possible to do so if you are not careful! Read the whole post before trying this.
First off my problem. So, I have a droid eris that suddenly stopped working a couple months ago while I was traveling(it took me this long to fix it). It was not rooted and had all stock apps ect on it. It could not boot past the three skateboarding droids screen. I do not know what version of android it had on it before unfortunately.
First I tried fastboot. I could get it to go into usb-fastboot mode but my bootloader was still the 1.46 S-ON variety. So fastboot could detect it but not do anything else.
Next I tried ADB. I set up Android SDK with ADB and HTC sync to maybe get the USB drivers to work on my windows XP machine, but alas no luck. ADB could never detect the device. I even tried setting up the SDK on my Ubuntu Linux machine, but once again it could not detect the Eris.
So I did what I perhaps should have done first which was to try different PB00IMG.zip files with Hboot. I downloaded the engineering leak PB00IMG.zip file and put it on the SD card(see below for where to get it from). And finally some luck! When I put the Eris into Hboot the Eris recognized the PB00IMG.zip file and loaded it! But I got stuck again because my track ball button does not work and Hboot needs the trackball to do the "action" and update the phone.
So, not having a warranty to worry about, and seemingly no other options I decided to muck around inside the eris. A button is just two points on a circuit that get momentarily connected when the button is pushed, so why not just find the points on the board and short it? It was actually quite easy.
It should go without saying though that doing this will void your warranty if any, and might destroy your phone(if you did something like shorting from the battery to some other chip ect). I also advise not to do this procedure with the phone plugged into either a computer or its charger. As the points that need to be shorted are right by the USB circuits, an acidental short from there with it plugged in could also potentially damage your phone.
Anyway here are the steps I followed:
1. Download the PB00IMG.zip, I got it from the xda post "How To Install Engineering bootloader FOR LEAK ROOTERS"
The file is called "original root rom" in the post. After downloading, rename it PB00IMG.zip
2. Put the PB00IMG.zip in the root(top) folder of you SD card.
3. Make sure your battery is fully charged. Turn the phone off and disassemble, I'm sure there are some good guides for this out there somewhere. Or you can just do this: Take the back plate off exposing the battery and SD card. Then remove the SD card(it sometimes interfered with me getting the next part of the case off) and battery. Then Take the 4 screws out of the corners of the Eris. The screws are those dumb 6 sided star type, I found a fine philips head worked fine though. Next pry the case open starting around the USB port and working upwards, I used a small flat head screwdriver for this.
4. Once you have the inner back case off you should see a big copper shield thing, the camera and some circuit boards ect. The board we are interested in is the USB/Track ball board. It is Blueish green on my Eris. It has the micro USB port on it.
5. Now we need power to run the phone so it can load the file in Hboot, so we have to attach the battery in some way so that it powers the phone. I used a zip tie and put it up against the power terminals it would normally be against anyway. I pulled the zip tie tight and booted up the phone. It should be noted that you have to be very careful not to move the battery during the procedure, especially once it starts updating as this might cause the phone to shut down in the middle of updating, which seems... maybe very bad. I avoided moving the battery by only holding on to the edges of the front portion of the case(the part with the screen in it).
6. So the next step is to power up the phone into Hboot mode(I think this is done with volume down and power pressed at the same time). Hboot checks the PB00IMG.zip file and loads it(hopefully!) and then it gives you the txt "Do you wish to begin update now?" or something and requires that you push the trackball to begin.
7. Be careful not to move the battery during this step or the next! Now you have to carefully test around with a small segment of wire or a paper clip(or a circuit bending probe made out of two old probes of a multimeter soldered together) and short various solder connections on the USB/trackball board. Do not make shorts from the battery, or its terminals on the board! The solder pads you are looking for are located on small capacitor and transistor surfance mount components(basically little square components on the board with solder points on them). These components we are located right on the other side of the board from the trackball button(the button is right under the trackball). Just to be clear we are making shorts on the side of the board that is facing up when the screen is facing down. Some of the shorts will light up the track ball LED and one will count as a trackball button push, this is the one we need. It might take a couple minutes of messing around but it is there. I'm not sure exactly which short it is because my phone had its screen facing down while doing this so don't know the one that did it.
8. Once you get that trackball buttons shorted patiently wait for the update to finish and it should ask you if you want to reboot the phone. I'm not sure if it is necessary but I short circuited it again at this point to push the trackball button again. It rebooted and the phone booted normally! I had to go through the phone set up again but that is not really a problem. And now it is 1.49.2 S-Off!
. Kudos to you!
) ill have to give it a lil closer of a read later,im on my way out the door for work.