black or white screen

G4EML
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Re: black or white screen

Post by G4EML » Fri Jan 24, 2025 9:55 pm

Blank screen is usually caused by bad connections in the ribbon cable between the radio main board and the front panel. This is quite a common failure and may have coincidentally occured when you did the firmware update.

The usual fix for this it to disconnect and reconnect both ends of the ribbon cable.

Colin G4EML

n7eal
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Re: black or white screen

Post by n7eal » Thu Jan 30, 2025 2:12 pm

the fact one firmware turn the screen white, and another turn the screen all black makes me think it's not a ribbon cable connection problem which I'm aware of.

I still think it's newer hardware ver....

VK3KYY
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Re: black or white screen

Post by VK3KYY » Thu Jan 30, 2025 7:40 pm

n7eal wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2025 2:12 pm
the fact one firmware turn the screen white, and another turn the screen all black makes me think it's not a ribbon cable connection problem which I'm aware of.

I still think it's newer hardware ver....
Please can you explain the problem again.

IIRC you are sawing that the screen is either "black" or "white" depending on which firmware target you install, but you sy the screen is not "valid"

What does "valid" mean in this context?


Also I presume when you say back or white, you are referring to whether the backlight is illuminated or not.
I.e the difference with the 10w radios is that the manufacturer changed the hardware design and swapped the PA enable and backlight signals from the MCU ( CPU )

If you are sawing that on firmware e,g. The 10W illuminates the backlight, but the screen is blank, then it's still possible that you have a connection problem, i.e with the pixel data connections

If you can't find an official firmware version that works, it points to the same conclusion

Often the ribbon cable to the screen gets disturbed when people plug in the USB cable to update the firmware... This has happened to multiple people fairly recently

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MELERIX
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Re: black or white screen

Post by MELERIX » Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:58 pm

n7eal wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2025 2:12 pm
the fact one firmware turn the screen white, and another turn the screen all black makes me think it's not a ribbon cable connection problem which I'm aware of.

I still think it's newer hardware ver....
see this: viewtopic.php?p=35489#p35489 seems to be realated.

VK3KYY
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Re: black or white screen

Post by VK3KYY » Fri Jan 31, 2025 2:26 am

MELERIX wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:58 pm
n7eal wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2025 2:12 pm
the fact one firmware turn the screen white, and another turn the screen all black makes me think it's not a ribbon cable connection problem which I'm aware of.

I still think it's newer hardware ver....
see this: viewtopic.php?p=35489#p35489 seems to be realated.
That person seems to have loaded the Donor Firmware as the main firmware, which won't work at all on the RT3S / UV380 as the Donor firmware we use is from the MD9600

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MELERIX
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Re: black or white screen

Post by MELERIX » Fri Jan 31, 2025 3:45 am

what I've understand for that thread is that he first flashed the radio with the proper donor firmware file and with the normal opengd77 for uv380 but after that the screen was completely black, so he decided to restored flash and thinking to go back to the original firmware, but instead of that he flashed again opengd77 but this time the Japanese version for uv380 and the same donor file, and that fixed the screen.

VK3KYY
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Re: black or white screen

Post by VK3KYY » Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:05 am

MELERIX wrote:
Fri Jan 31, 2025 3:45 am
what I've understand for that thread is that he first flashed the radio with the proper donor firmware file and with the normal opengd77 for uv380 but after that the screen was completely black, so he decided to restored flash and thinking to go back to the original firmware, but instead of that he flashed again opengd77 but this time the Japanese version for uv380 and the same donor file, and that fixed the screen.
The only difference with the Japanese version is that the font bitmap contains Japanese characters.

So probably he just did things correctly the last time he flashed the radio, but he also happened to use the Japanese version when he did things correctly.

The CPS won't flash the official firmware correctly, even for the donor firmware, onto the MD9600, because the official firmware file is encrypted but the OpenGD77 firmware isn't.

Possibly we should change the CPS to prevent it allowing people to flash the official donor firmware, by checking that the firmware they select contains the string text OpenGD77.

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MELERIX
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Re: black or white screen

Post by MELERIX » Fri Jan 31, 2025 7:07 am

VK3KYY wrote:
Fri Jan 31, 2025 6:05 am
Possibly we should change the CPS to prevent it allowing people to flash the official donor firmware, by checking that the firmware they select contains the string text OpenGD77.
yes, that could solve the issue, making the CPS to only allow select specific donor file and specific opengd77 file according to the radio model selected in the CPS.

well, some people that does not read the procedures may still fail, but with that change they will fail less I guess xD

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F1RMB
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Re: black or white screen

Post by F1RMB » Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:04 am

Hmmmm, I thought it could now only load .bin and .zip files.

VK3KYY
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Re: black or white screen

Post by VK3KYY » Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:11 am

F1RMB wrote:
Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:04 am
Hmmmm, I thought it could now only load .bin and .zip files.
Yes. But donor is a bin file on the STM32 radios

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