Hi I’ve connected my Toniebox with esp32 and a 3 pin connector to get the firmware, but somnething went wrong. The firmware read stopped everythime at different percent and stopped because of timeout. I switched USB Ports, checked Cables and found out, that the toniebox doesn’t went back to normal mode. No green blinking, no sound, when no pin connector is connected and jumper is out. I tried to get the firmware on a windows pc and the webbrowser and the esptool could finish the task, but all i got was a 8mb file full of FF FF FF. Can I revert the process or is the board bricked?
Did you try to flash this broken backup? If yes, you are most likely lost.
If you don’t have a full backup out of a successful attempt, you can only try to read the firmware from the SOP8 directly, like you would on a cc3235 to rescue your certificates.
I didn’t get that far. I just followed the steps and connected the pin connector to the three pins on the board, bridged the J100 and then tried the process several times on the Macbook with the web browser version to read the flash. The reading of the flash sometimes stopped after 6% or sometimes after 74% or somewhere in between. Somewhere in between, I also noticed that the Toniebox would no longer start. I have not put any firmware back on the board. Does this mean that I now have to buy a CH341A programmer and follow the instructions? Where can I find the SOP8? And how can I explain this to my wife? 
In the MyDealz video it sounded like it was very difficult to break something :`(
This would be worth trying, if you want to tinker. The SOP8 adapters you can find on aliexpress or amazon.
It is very unlikely, but it is hardware. If a connection is bad, something could happen. Especially if GND is not connected securely.
@0xbadbee Out if curiosity: did I get you right that I could simply write to the flash chip directly on an ESP32 board, without UART etc.? Is it the same flash chip as the CC3235 (IS25LP032)?
Yes you can. This is the way I did it when experimenting with it. If it is the same chip, I don’t know, but it worked with serprog on the pico + flashrom.
i made a simple checker “is my flash empty” to
a) first check the connection reliability and then
b) go through all of the flash memory and show if it is all-0xFF
if you can let it run on your chip, we can see if there is still some flash content.
https://upload.g3gg0.de/pub_files/162d0630ed28980b116e27783785d949/ESP-ROM-Debug.html
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Is it now for the already used connection with the three pins or for the direct connection with sop8? I think the first, right? So I can check it tomorrow. The other way needs some time. The Programmer with the sop8 clip is on the way
i get this response: Synchronizing failed with error. Error: Timeout after 100 ms waiting for response to command 8
i connect the uart with the three pins, jumper on j100, add battery, remove jumper and then open serial port
I’ve tried it but I stuck to the following point. When I create a dump with this command:
$ sudo flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r backupCC3235.bin
flashrom unknown on Linux 6.6.51+rpt-rpi-v8 (aarch64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found GigaDevice flash chip "GD25Q64(B)" (8192 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Reading flash... done.
And witrh ls -lah I can see that the bin is again 8mb. If I search for Boxine, there is nothing found. It seems empty:
$ ls -lah
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8.0M Nov 27 09:18 backupCC3235.bin
$ strings backupCC3235.bin | grep "Boxine GmbH Root CA"
$
Is my Box dead?
Please check the content of the file.
It is full of FF?
If yes, you flash got erased.
How do I check the content of the file?
nevermind, I installed hexedit and my backup is full of FF
What can I do at this point?
You lost your flash content and your certificates.
It may be possible to rebuild the flash with the a backup of another esp32 box and putting custom generated certs into it or use the certs of another box.
The box will never be able to connect to the boxine cloud. But this way you may use it with teddyCloud.