Brick (electronics)
In terms of consumer electronics a Brick (English brick [ stone ] ) means an electronic device like a smartphone, a gaming console, a router or a tablet computer that has a serious misconfiguration, a corrupted firmware or a hardware problem and not more functioning as required. The name is derived from the approximately cuboid shape of many electronic devices (and their power supplies ) and plays important that the unit can still be used as a large and heavy object. Before Brick found its way into German everyday language, according to an exclusive fitness equipment damaged as a paperweight was rumored humorous ("[ ... ] only good for a paperweight ").
The term can also be used as a verb, for example, someone might say: "I have gebrickt my MP3 player when I 've tried to modify its firmware. "
Generally referred bricken damage, which renders the device permanently unusable. This is often triggered by a misconfiguration important onboard software (that is, such that is integrated into the hardware). Regardless of the term used gebrickt to describe the situation in which a device is not working, but could still be opportunities there, that the device is restored to a functional state. This is often referred to as soft -brick or semi -brick, whereas unrepairable devices are referred to as hard or brick full brick.
Cause and Prevention
The Bricken of a device is usually the undesirable consequence of an update of the corresponding device. Many devices have an update procedure that must not be interrupted. If the process is interrupted by a power failure, a user intervention or for any other reason, the existing firmware can be partially overwritten and unusable. The risk of destruction can be minimized by the use of all preventive measures for a break.
Causes of Brickens may lie in the installation of a faulty or imaginary for a different hardware revision firmware. Another cause may be the installation of an incompletely patched firmware version, for example, a firmware of a DVD drive that plays only DVDs that were purchased in a given region, so do not support all DVD region code.
Devices can also by malicious programs and partly by executing actually less dangerous software that contains errors, they are damaged.
Some devices have two copies of the firmware. Of these copies is active and the other is not normally accessible by processes that could damage it, stored in a static ROM or a writable nonvolatile memory. There also exists a method to copy the backed up firmware even if the active version is damaged, which means that the active firmware, if it was damaged, can be replaced by the copy, and the device is functional so again. Other devices have a minimal bootloader firmware, which is usually activated by a switch or a jumper. Here, the device does not operate normally, but it is possible to restore the main firmware.
Unbricken
Some devices that are gebrickt because their non-volatile memory is described incorrectly, can again be fully operational by the use of additional hardware ( a debug board ), which addresses the memory in question directly. This procedure is similar to that is used when the memory is empty or when a new device. This type of Bricken and Unbricken is performed typically during the testing and development of a firmware. In other cases, partial complex software and hardware procedures have been developed, so there is a good chance to repair the unit. However, there is no uniform method, because each device has a different structure. There are also created by individual users modification programs available to partially or completely gebrickten devices a way to repair. Examples of such homebrew software is BootMii, which is used to repair a partially gebrickte Nintendo Wii, and the ClockworkMod for Android devices.
Systems
In principle, any device can use a rewritable firmware, or with important settings that are saved in Flash or EEPROM memory, bricken. Many, but not all, devices that can be updated by the user, have a protection against the Bricken. In contrast, have devices where an update is usually performed only by authorized service personnel, usually no such protection.
For devices are the following known that it can come to Bricken: older computers (newer models have often two BIOSes, or other form of protection ), many mobile phones, handheld consoles such as PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS, game consoles such as Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, many SCSI devices and several generations of hard drives and routers.
Online and mobile services
Many newer systems that are able to connect to online services (eg, iPhone, PlayStation 3, Xbox and Xbox 360), have a unique hardware serial number. This makes it possible to monitor individual system over a network, and to exclude certain online services. Such systems operate at independent of the online services for activities usually normal. For users of the online services the device has become aware of a certain amount of damage and lack of usability.
Mobile phones have the IMEI a static serial number. A phone is reported stolen, it is possible to block the IMEI in mobile networks, which in principle makes the device unusable. However, it is possible, with the appropriate experience and equipment to change the IMEI.