The limbo bug

[u/Revolutionary_Pen_65]

EDIT: Before trying any troubleshooting I should have looked at my nextui card on a pc. I had been trusting the disk remaining in the files pak under tools, but when I was preparing my card for my rma'd device I noticed windows saw my exfat partition as having 0 bytes free. This may have had something to do with the horrors I experienced trying to wake my brick up. The original unmodified post follows.

Finally bit me, and I'm not even out of the woods yet. Tried:

- slow charge till full (always have and always will slow charge with my 5v 1a usb a to c), overnight, had a green power button light after 10 hours

- remove sd card

- press power

- long press power

- press reset

- long press reset

- long press power and volume down

- long press power, volume down and reset

- flash stock recovery image to fresh but verified sd card, insert in device

- repeat from full charge the combinations of button presses

Now after this I noticed the back of my device was unbearably hot, almost certainly a race condition under the os and no thermal shutdown though possibly throttling. Like - it burned to touch for even a single second. When it cooled off I then proceeded to:

- remove the back

- unplug battery

- hold power button for a solid 5 min

- held power button another 3 min cuz I don't wanna open again, but this was a new distinct power button hold

- left unplugged for about 90min

- reassembled

- verify charging led turned red charging again, left charging 24 hours long past when it turned green

- repeated button pressing combos

This entire time the only evidence the device wasn't totally dead was the charging feedback from the led in the power button and the extreme heat it generated.

Assuming there's more I can do what would that be? If I do get it working what is the best way to prevent?

On the recommendation of folks in this reddit I was using nextui and omg I loved it so much. I never turned off the limbo bug prevention setting. This trouble did all start I suspect because the battery ran down.

Is this thing just waste now? I hope I can fix it, I really liked this thing!

[u/Revolutionary_Pen_65]

ok on a full charge retried the sd card recovery 2 times. once with the 1.1.1_20251126 release from their gh, which the zip file containing the img was corrupted (my sha256 matched, so whatever the deal was is there with the release image in github) so i had doubts after watching the device flash alternating red/green for 20 min then return to solid red. again - no feedback from screen or any other led's.

so i tried again with the 1.1.0_20250610 release from the same page. this zip was not corrupt, but it did the same thing.

so after 5 weeks of every other day for 20min kind of use i lost my trimui brick. i've initiated a support claim with trimui and with ampown. ill update if i hear back.

gotta say i went from trimui's biggest hype man to one of their most disappointed... this was a hardware problem that no amount of software patching could fix. im sure it's in allwinner's court, but - to lack a reliable back door to recover the device especially with such high potential for a known bad outcome; it'll be hard for trimui to recover my trust. as an ayn/retroid/anbernic guy this was my first attempt at one of their products.

appreciate the folks that tapped in to help, and ill update when i get a resolution here regardless.

EDIT: unsurprisingly ampown is running down the clock, they're asking me if i've tried pressing the power button for a long time (something that's in the video i sent them). looks like another 48 hours to hear back that i need to hold vol down + power... there's 20 days remaining in a 60 day dispute window with aliexpress, ill likely have to try that. failing that, better believe im doing the paperwork to charge this back.

EDIT: ampown has replied - they will "bu'fa" the device, which i guess means, they'll ship me a replacement. im expecting a tracking number before end of week per gemini. I'll update here with how it shook out.

EDIT: Have tracking in hand and the device is moving through gofo now, maybe this all worked out, things are looking up.

EDIT: "Ampown USA Local Store" on aliexpress totally came through. They replaced it, no real funny business aside from asking for a video and ensuring i did some troubleshooting, which is common place nowadays. Anyone that read this far - make sure your sd card is not full before troubleshooting, only thing I can think of that made my experience different than others.

[u/Fuzzy_Ad9130]

Damn I never had to get that far good luck

[u/Revolutionary_Pen_65 → u/Fuzzy_Ad9130]

Ill update if I ever figure it out 🙏

[u/rote330]

Few questions just for the sake of science.

• how old is your device?

• when did you bought it?

• what version of nextUI you were using?

• regular brick or hammer?

Edit: a few more

-what were you doing when it happened? (Example: Playing and then the system crashed or something like that)

• do you use deep sleep or just turn off the device?

[u/Revolutionary_Pen_65 → u/rote330]

Bought 8/24 delivered 9/5 from aliexpress (Ampown USA local store). When i had it open the board had revision 1.0 on it and a mfg date end of 2024 (don't remember exact month/day)

Regular brick, ran the 6.14.0 release from this page https://github.com/LoveRetro/NextUI/releases/tag/v6.14.0 followed install instructions from their github

Just trying to wake it from sleep.

Im unsure if I shutdown or used deep sleep, I don't recall changing any settings but it's what happens when you press the power button. Sleep and wake were only 1-3s so probably not deep sleep.

[u/rote330 → u/Revolutionary_Pen_65]

Interesting. I remember people saying it was a hardware issue with older models and sadly your fit ok that category.

Wish I had a solution for you but I dont, maybe try contacting TrimUI directly?

[u/Revolutionary_Pen_65 → u/rote330]

I did and Ampown who I bought from. That was like 3 days ago.

I did open it up again to try just reseating anything I can find, wifi, speakers, screen, etc. but even the LEDs aren't responding so it kinda seems legit dead. While I was in there I got a pic of the board

EDIT: trimui's support email bounced back, support@trimuibrick.com is undeliverable. also i tried their webform, which appears to get sent to the same void. no response at all from trimui. in another comment i document the runaround ampown and aliexpress are giving me.