How to revive a bricked device

[rich]

I have a ZX328n that is in an infinite loop printing out debug info.
Essentially bricked.
The IDE hangs with so much data coming in.

Any ideas how i can get the chip out of its loop?

Thanks

[kranenborg]

Hi Rich,

I am a bit late to the party, but a recent revival in a ZX-based project (and my revived interest in the device) caused me noting your question:

I had a similar issue. It was caused by the fact that I applied the ClockPrescaler option with a large factor (8x for a ZX-328L): it would only print the "ZBasic v4.3.5" message in the debug window at startup and then remain deaf for anything else (including download efforts, getting the device type info from the IDE etc., so all comms were broken).

In my case there appeared to be a very easy fix however and it might work for you as well: Put power on the device only immediately AFTER you have sent the Go command (for downloading a new program). This did the trick for me as a program download is likely one of the first things your ZX-device does before it does anything else (that caused the loss of responsiveness).

I am interested to hear whether this works for you, too.

Regards,
Jurjen

[rich]

Thank for your response. Sorry it took me so long to answer.
I will try that soon.
Another question along that line is what is the fastest infinite loop possible and the download from the IDE still works.

Anyone know?

richard

[dkinzer]

The ZX devices are put into "monitor" mode by wiggling the ATN line in a prescribed way. This causes the device to be reset in a way that causes it to jump into the monitor code in which it will accept download commands.

You might try using the zload appication to download a prototypical "Hello, world" app. The zload app ignores most data coming from the device so the data output should not be a problem.

www.zbasic.net/doc/ZBasicRef.php?page=173

If that doesn't work, we would be happy to re-flash the device for you.

[rich]

Thanks for the offer of reflashing Don.
I will try zboot and get back to you.

Thanks much for the help.
cheers,
richard