Unbricking your GP2X

Like other handhelds, the GP2X sometimes benefits from a firmware upgrade. Upgrading your firmware can improve performance, remove bugs, and add new features. Unfortunately, there's also the chance that it can wipe your bootloader and change your expensive and fun handheld into an expensive paperwight.

Fortunately, even this is fixable with the right tools.

Firstly, make sure your GP2X really is bricked: Turn it on and see what the screen does. If it lights up white, and then colored lines slowly fade into view, it's bricked and you need this guide. If you get any kind of boot screen or image, it's not bricked: Go elsewhere for troubleshooting!

Still reading? My condolences. Let's get that thing unbricked, shall we?

You need some equipment. Firstly and worstly, you need JTAG. This is an interface between your PC and the GP2X's hardware: It can re-write the boot loader directly to the chip.

If you're that way inclinded, you can get hold of the right bits & pieces and make a JTAG yourself. If not, your best bet is to buy a BoB, or Breakout Box, with JTAG built in. It's more expensive, but it'll give you USB, TV-Out and serial port capability for your GP2X once it's unbricked.

If you buy a BoB, you'll also need a male-male 25-pin parallel port cable to connect it to your PC. Make sure that this cable has all 25 pins wired up! Cheaper "Printer cable" and "File transfer cable" options exist, but they only connect the minimum number of pins. They are no good. Get a cable with all pins connected.

Lastly, power supply: Ideally, you'd use two PSUs: One for the BoB, one for the Gp2X. BoBs use the same fitting as the GP2X. If you only have one PSU, I advise you to power the BoB with it, and run the GP2X off batteries. The early GP2Xs cannot power the BoB by themselves, but I gather the newer ones can, so at a pinch you may be able to get away purely with batteries. A PSU is defintely a good idea tho.

That's the hardware you need. Now let's get the software. You need to download a couple of things: The new GP2X firmware, and the software that will install it.

Firmware can be downloaded from GP2X's website, from the GP32X website, or from me at a pinch - but bear in mind that I don't keep this up-to-date, there may be newer firmware available. Unzip the file, and copy all the files onto a blank SD card - bootloader, kernel, and all! Then put the SD card into your GP2X.

The JTAG software can be downloaded from here. Regrettably, I don't have a Linux version yet, so this is Windows-only. Sorry.

So, you have a BoB, you have a fully-wired 25-pin parallel port cable, you have an EXT-EXT cable, you have a GP2X, you have power to both machines, and you have your PC. You also have the software and the firmware. You're ready to begin.

Connect everything up: GP2X to BoB, BoB to PC. Power up the BoB and the GP2X. When everything is plugged in & powered, then and only then do you boot your PC: Windows seems to have issues with detecting a BoB if it's not present at boot.

If you've had some other device plugged in via the parallel port and it worked, then you can boot as normal. If not, it's worth going into your BIOS and just making sure that there's no "Disable Parallel Port" option that's been set to "Yes" or anything. Once you've made sure there isn't, continue to boot.

Run GP2XRecovery.exe - ideally from the command prompt, otherwise just double-clicking should work. A number of messages will scroll by. If they don't include a long list of "Write block" messages, then the reflashing has failed, even if you get a "Success" message at the end. Eventually, it'll tell you it's finished.

Turn off and unplug the GP2X from the BoB. Now wait for at least 20 seconds. This is important.

After 20 seconds or more have passed, hold down the "Start" and "Select" buttons. This is important.

With the two buttons pressed, turn on your GP2X. You'll get the white screen momentarily, but then you should get a message telling you that the firmware is upgrading. It's not, of course: There isn't any firmware, so this is an install, not an upgrade. But hey, we're not pedantic!

Once the firmware has installed (takes a while!), turn off the handheld and remove the SD card. This is important.

Turn the power back on one more time. You should have a working GP2X again. Yay! Wipe the firmware files from your SD card and you're ready to go again.

If it didn't work, try the whole thing one more time. If failure continues, hit the forums and make sure you include the complete GP2XRecovery output text and precise details of what worked / didn't work.

This work is copyright and belongs to Dominic Humphries. It may be redistributed under a Creative Commons License. This page's URL must be supplied in attribution.