[raymw]

With the pin shorting technique I have noticed that nothing happens even holding the shorting pins and the reset button in for a couple of minutes BUT if you then simply remove the pin shorting and reset button, power off the box and reboot still with the boot SD card in and just the reset button held in (no need to short the pins again this time) then you will get into old normal recovery mode. Then simply reboot with the Ember convert file set SD card in instead and of course just the reset button held in for 10-15 seconds in the normal way and bingo you have Ember V1.0.0

Sorted it out...... exactly how raymw said in the above quoted post.... thanks!

So I put Ember 1.0 on my box and then it went wonky so I decided that
I would put mx linux back on it.

I bricked it and have tried many things to get the boot screen up that
were suggested in the post.

Here's what I have been trying lately:
I have a black screen.
I bridged the pins and hold in reset for 2 mins, with the empty boot disk in.
Turn off.
Restart the box with just the reset button pressed and the empty boot
disk for 15 to 20 seconds. I get nothing.
I still have a black screen.
Should I just keep trying or try something else?

Well Ed I can only suggest the method I outlined here before, which you have used it seems. I see some other suggestions above too but basically they are exactly how I have described. I have had two boxes of which one would not unbrick at all and I sent it back to China, via my supplier, where Geniatech kindly fixed it for me, and the other one I am still working on as I am confident I can unbrick that when I get the free time.

Some boxes seem to unbrick first time when shorting the pins and others seem to take many times. Make sure you do not apply too much pressure when shorting those pins as they are very fragile and can break away from their soldered connection and then you will never boot until you make the solder joint good again and then please do so very very carefully with a very fine point solder iron as too much heat applied will easily destroy the motherboard solder pads an then it is a doorstop. .

You must though ensure that you actually do have the pins properly shorted as it is very difficult I find to ascertain whether my small electrical flat head screwdriver is actually fully in contact with both pins. I think that is the reason why many attempts fail and they only end up working when the pin shorting is good, but that is only conjecture though it does seem most likely.

Sadly the last two boxes bricked when I tried to install the public EmbER V2.0.2 on them directly over the default Android OS and both failed to boot after what seemed a successful install. I waited up to 20 minutes for the post flashing auto boot up to complete and still only a blank black screen. So both those boxes then required unbricking (one I have done and is now running 100% solid with MX Linux Helix 14.2, and the other one is still to do as per above. So for now I only use Auxbox's MX Linux Helix 14.2 dated 14/04/2015 to install on new Android G02Ref boxes, which is very stable and reliable and never fails when flashing to these boxes like the ATV1200/1220. Though MX Linux builds still have the easy fixable (with an active screen saver) display freezing problem that EmbER has cured.

I hope EmbER v3 will solve these problems with bricking when flashing to these new G02Ref boxes as I cannot spend the time having to unbrick boxes, and for which I really have never had such problems before. I do though like EmbER a lot and the whole concept of OTA OS updating is excellent and I also have enormous respect and confidence in the work of croniccory and Josh.