Unable to create flash backup

Hi all,

first of all. I’m raw recuit to flashing, cmd, python etc. (never did such things before)

I managed so far to DIY the sd card via cable to the socket of the box for easier access and now I wanted to try to use Tonycloud instead of this procedure of fetching sd card, insert it in card reader, using teddybench, and so on and so on…

I was able to install CC3200 tool (was difficult to me because… look above :smiley: )
After that I found chukf’s guide (appreciate it a lot) and copied the cc3200tool commands in order to backup the original firmware but then I run into this error messages :disappointed_relieved:

C:\Users\phili\cc3200tool\Backup_Firmware>cc3200tool -p COM3 --reset dtr read_all_files ExtractedFromBox/
2024-12-16 20:13:33,789 – Connecting to target…
2024-12-16 20:13:36,099 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-16 20:13:38,313 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-16 20:13:40,519 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-16 20:13:42,734 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-16 20:13:44,937 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-16 20:13:44,938 – Could not connect to target: Did not get ACK on break condition

  • I use this this UART adapter for connecting to the toniebox via 0.30mm copper wire with jumper cables.
  • I measured the voltage and my multimeter is measuring 3,2V. Is this not sufficient?
  • I measured from every pin of UART to PCB to detect any shorts but there weren’t any
  • PCB is connected to power supply without battery pack

Hopefully I wrote enough information for somebody to identify what I’m doing wrong

Cheers
Hophi

Wouldn’t worry about that.

Are you measuring from the red part to your UART?
image

From what you described, everything seems correct. Are you running windows 10 or 11? Do you see an exclamation mark next to your device in device manager under ports, i.e. is the correct driver installed?

a) try a different USB port
b) make sure you really connected the correct pins to the correct contants on the PCB
c) instead of using --reset dtr you could briefly connect RTS to GND before each command

Looks like the one I use myself. I read some time ago that there are fake FT232s out there, I wouldn’t immediatly think this is the culprit, just wanted to mention it.

yes

My machine is on win10

I think not. Snip below of the UART

is this the correct driver installed?
I didn’t install it manually but in my opinion this should be the newest version 2.12.36.4 that I found on FTDI homepage

I tried today to bridge SPO2 with VCC of the Toniebox as written in WIKI chapter 4.3.
Unfortunately without success.

You didn’t before? Or did you manually supply 3.3 V to SOP2?

Can you post a picture / sketch of your cabling?

Did you try manually connecting rst and gnd?

I stick to your CC3200 newbie guide and even picked the same colors for my jumper cables :smiley:

and I tried without VCC of UART and bridging VCC with SOP2 of PCB

everytime same timeout error

C:\Users\phili\cc3200tool\Backup_Firmware>cc3200tool -p COM3 --reset dtr read_all_files ExtractedFromBox/
2024-12-18 17:10:56,414 – Connecting to target…
2024-12-18 17:10:58,730 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-18 17:11:00,933 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-18 17:11:03,134 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-18 17:11:05,348 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-18 17:11:07,562 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-18 17:11:07,562 – Could not connect to target: Did not get ACK on break condition

should I try to hot glue the copper cables?

Just to be sure. My procedure is:

  1. Connecting UART via USB-C to my PC
  2. Connecting power supply
  3. Execute cc3200tool command in CMD

Is this the correct order in general?

Yes.

Also maybe your wires are too long. See if you can shorten them, especially the part where you wraped them around your jumper cables.

You never answered if you tried that.

Yes.

I shortened the cables as much as possible. Still no success :cry:
I didn’t hot glued the cables yet.

I didn’t connect the speakers to the PCB since now. After connecting the UART to my PC it wasn’t playing the “welcome sound”. So I assume this is the correct behaviour.
BUT the LED on top of PCB first starts flashing and after that it glows permanently but I have a feeling that it’s flickering until I plug in power supply. Is this normal? Or indicator that my wiring is still wrong.

Maybe it is a fake after all?

Side note:
I have another Toniebox at home but with the second one it isn’t working either.

Actually what do you mean by that? If my UART isn’t a fake one I have DTR on that

Slowly but surely I think I’m kinda too dumb to hack my box :cry:

A post was split to a new topic: Timed out while waiting for ack

This is normal.

I’d your somewhat careful you can pull off the glue blob afterwards without damaging anything. It’s probably best to have a secure connection.

If your cabling is correct and every contact is made, then I can’t really figure out what’s wrong.

Leave out the reset dtr part of the command. Before issuing th command, use a jumper cable to shortly connect RTS to GND.

Or just defective.

Try with manually connecting as described above.

If you’re from NRW shoot me a PM, maybe luck has it that we’re close to each other.

Excuse the stupid question, but you definitely have the cc3200 chip?

i have the same problem as op. can someone tell me what exactly “connect RTS to GND means”? ty

Connect the VCC Pin (3) with the Sop2 Pin (9).

According to @hophi0815 post history he did that. And hence

should land him in UART boot mode. He later tried without making that connection but that doesn’t work :wink:

Unless I misunderstand you, the question for @hophi0815 and @ChaosWithin is what is meant by manually connecting RST to GND.

Taken from the wiki since my UART has a working DTR pin:

If your UART is missing DTR you will need to connect the Toniebox RST to GND for a moment before each command to reset the box. If you reset the box it should glow green all the time without booting and playing its startup jingle.

@ChaosWithin Before you do that, verify you connected everything correctly. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be working if you
a) connected everything correctly
b) your UART is not defective
c) you are not forgetting the --reset dtr part of the commands

I’m just suggesting manually resetting since it’s not working for OP using the DTR Pin on their UART.

:smiley:
I can understand your question. But I should be the CC3200. But actually I don’t know whether this is V1 or V2 :man_shrugging:

I hot glued the cabling. Didn’t work.

No. I’m from Bavaria border to Hesse near Frankfurt.

Does anyone know if it is a problem becuase my UART connection is USB-C?

I ask myself if I should buy another UART or buy the Tag Connector

Since i just replied and read your post again, I was beginning wondering that, coincidentally you’re also pointing that out.

Can you use another cable? I had a feeling it won’t be an issue with USB C but I had many USB B cables that did not support data, only charging. Sorry I didn’t catch that earlier, if that’s an issue. I just assumed USB C would be capable of delivering data and didn’t think further.

I can only take your word for it, but if your connection is reliable (you measured it) I’d rather go for a another UART than the tag connect. Also an UART is much cheaper :wink:
Try different cables first though!

I’m going to order that UART of amazon henryk mentioned in hardware-needed-for-bootloader topic

I already used 2 different USB-C cables (one of my smartphone that definetely is able to transmit data). And I tried different USB ports at my PC.

Anyway I’ll give the amazon UART a shot and will see.

If nothing helps I have to flash the ESP32 box which was actually intended for my parents if grandchildren making sleepover there

I mean something’s clearly not working as intended. Did you try connecting RST and GND with a known data cable yet?

I shorted Pin 4 with 5 via Jumper cable (used longer copper cables) and the UART was emitting a red LED/Light (I don’t know exactly).

But wait did I misunderstood something?
Do I have to Interrupt the cable from Pin 4 of PCB to the UART’s DTR-pin?

VCC is connected to SOP2?
DTR is connected to RST?

Connection is verified? Short cables used?

It seems like the new uart is working better however there still seems to be a connection issue.

good news:
I’ve got the UART from amazon.

I used this command

cc3200tool -p COM4 --reset dtr read_all_files ExtractedFromBox/

and the folder “ExtracedFromBox” was created with different subfolders containing different files with many 0KB file size.
I did this several times and compared the file sizes and remarked, that the files have different amount of size each time I do this. So in my asumption, my cabling might be unstable.
I think I try to solder my copper cable to the jumper cables to be sure about the transfer.

C:\Users\phili\cc3200tool\Backup>cc3200tool -p COM4 --reset dtr read_all_files ExtractedFromBox/
2024-12-28 16:44:49,165 – Connecting to target…
2024-12-28 16:44:51,475 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:44:51,677 – Connected, reading version…
2024-12-28 16:44:51,679 – connected to target
2024-12-28 16:44:51,679 – Version: CC3x00VersionInfo((0, 4, 1, 2), (0, 0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 0, 0), (16, 0, 0, 0))
2024-12-28 16:44:51,679 – This is a CC3200 device
2024-12-28 16:44:51,679 – Switching to NWP bootloader…
2024-12-28 16:44:51,695 – Switching UART to APPS…
2024-12-28 16:44:51,711 – Resetting communications …
2024-12-28 16:44:52,927 – Uploading rbtl3100s.dll…
2024-12-28 16:44:52,928 – Reading rbtl3100s.dll from file C:\Program Files\Python313\Lib\site-packages\cc3200tool\dll\rbtl3100s.dll
2024-12-28 16:44:52,928 – Getting storage list…
2024-12-28 16:44:53,664 – APPS version: CC3x00VersionInfo((0, 4, 0, 2), (0, 0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 0, 0), (16, 0, 0, 0))
2024-12-28 16:44:53,664 – Getting storage info…
2024-12-28 16:44:53,680 – storage #2 info bytes: 0x10, 0x0, 0x4, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0
2024-12-28 16:44:53,680 – Getting storage list…
2024-12-28 16:44:53,696 – Reading raw storage #2 start 0x0, size 0x2000…

2024-12-28 16:44:53,822 – [0] detected a valid FAT revision: 92
2024-12-28 16:44:53,822 – [1] detected a valid FAT revision: 93
2024-12-28 16:44:53,823 – Getting storage list…
2024-12-28 16:44:53,839 – Reading raw storage #2 start 0x1774, size 0x2774…

2024-12-28 16:44:54,003 – selected FAT revision: 93 (active)
2024-12-28 16:44:54,003 – Serial Flash block size: 4096 bytes
2024-12-28 16:44:54,003 – Serial Flash capacity: 1024 blocks
2024-12-28 16:44:54,003 –
2024-12-28 16:44:54,004 – file start size fail flags total filename
2024-12-28 16:44:54,004 – index block [BLKs] safe [BLKs]
2024-12-28 16:44:54,004 – ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2024-12-28 16:44:54,004 – N/A 0 5 N/A N/A 5 FATFS
2024-12-28 16:44:54,005 – 0 71 8 yes 0x0 16 /sys/mcuimg.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,005 – 4 105 1 no 0x4 1 /sys/mcubootinfo.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,005 – 6 106 53 yes 0x0 106 /sys/mcuimg1.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,006 – 7 212 53 no 0x4 53 /sys/mcuimg2.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,006 – 8 265 53 no 0x4 53 /sys/mcuimg3.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,006 – 9 408 5 yes 0x8 10 /tmp/phy.cal
2024-12-28 16:44:54,006 – 10 418 1 yes 0x8 2 /tmp/table.arp
2024-12-28 16:44:54,007 – 11 5 33 yes 0x8 66 /sys/servicepack.ucf
2024-12-28 16:44:54,007 – 12 87 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/mode.cfg
2024-12-28 16:44:54,007 – 13 89 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/ipcfg.ini
2024-12-28 16:44:54,007 – 14 91 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/ap.cfg
2024-12-28 16:44:54,008 – 15 93 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/devname.cfg
2024-12-28 16:44:54,008 – 16 95 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/mdns.cfg
2024-12-28 16:44:54,008 – 17 97 2 yes 0x8 4 /sys/pref.net
2024-12-28 16:44:54,008 – 18 101 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/stacfg.ini
2024-12-28 16:44:54,009 – 19 103 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/pmcfg.ini
2024-12-28 16:44:54,009 – 20 318 40 yes 0x8 80 /www/index.html
2024-12-28 16:44:54,009 – 21 398 4 yes 0x8 8 /www/toniebox.js
2024-12-28 16:44:54,010 – 22 406 1 yes 0x8 2 /cert/ca.der
2024-12-28 16:44:54,010 – 23 931 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/otastat.txt
2024-12-28 16:44:54,010 – 24 421 255 yes 0x8 510 /fw/sfx.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,010 – 26 933 1 yes 0x8 2 /sys/date_time.cfg
2024-12-28 16:44:54,011 – 27 420 1 no 0xc 1 /cert/client.der
2024-12-28 16:44:54,011 – 28 935 1 no 0xc 1 /cert/private.der
2024-12-28 16:44:54,011 – 29 936 1 yes 0x8 2 /settings.cfg
2024-12-28 16:44:54,011 –
2024-12-28 16:44:54,012 – Flash usage
2024-12-28 16:44:54,012 – -------------------------
2024-12-28 16:44:54,012 – used space: 938 blocks
2024-12-28 16:44:54,012 – free space: 86 blocks
2024-12-28 16:44:54,013 – memory hole: [938-1023]
2024-12-28 16:44:54,013 – Created local directory ExtractedFromBox/
2024-12-28 16:44:54,018 – Reading file /sys/mcuimg.bin → ExtractedFromBox/sys/mcuimg.bin
2024-12-28 16:44:54,160 – File /sys/mcuimg.bin could not be read, rx csum failed
2024-12-28 16:44:59,163 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:44:59,164 – File /sys/mcubootinfo.bin could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:04,171 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:04,171 – File /sys/mcuimg1.bin could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:09,187 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:09,187 – File /sys/mcuimg2.bin could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:14,189 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:14,189 – File /sys/mcuimg3.bin could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:19,196 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:19,196 – File /tmp/phy.cal could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:24,201 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:24,201 – File /tmp/table.arp could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:29,225 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:29,226 – File /sys/servicepack.ucf could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:34,234 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:34,234 – File /sys/mode.cfg could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:39,239 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:39,239 – File /sys/ipcfg.ini could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:44,254 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:44,254 – File /sys/ap.cfg could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:49,257 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:49,258 – File /sys/devname.cfg could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:54,263 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:54,263 – File /sys/mdns.cfg could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:45:59,267 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:45:59,267 – File /sys/pref.net could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:04,274 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:04,275 – File /sys/stacfg.ini could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:09,283 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:09,284 – File /sys/pmcfg.ini could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:14,296 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:14,297 – File /www/index.html could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:19,307 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:19,307 – File /www/toniebox.js could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:24,310 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:24,310 – File /cert/ca.der could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:29,325 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:29,325 – File /sys/otastat.txt could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:34,338 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:34,338 – File /fw/sfx.bin could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:39,354 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:39,354 – File /sys/date_time.cfg could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:44,362 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:44,362 – File /cert/client.der could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:49,371 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:49,371 – File /cert/private.der could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:54,381 – timed out while waiting for ack
2024-12-28 16:46:54,381 – File /settings.cfg could not be read, No ack for packet opcode=0x2a
2024-12-28 16:46:54,382 – One or more files could not be verified or read at all

Is the third column from the left the target size of the respective file?

in my case the first file size in my extracted folder is 4 KB

VCC is connected to SOP2?
DTR is connected to RST?

Connection is verified? Short cables used?

It seems like the new uart is working better however there still seems to be a connection issue.