Recently I’ve managed to brick my sheevaplug. For those not familiar with sheevaplug, they are basically a small plug computer which is ideally suited for being a small home server. I use mine as a NAS at home.

Thankfully, it was very easy to unbrick the sheevaplug thanks to a couple of really helpful website. There is a thread on NewIT that helped me unbrick my plug.

Below is a summary of what I’ve done following the instructions from NewIT above. Basically, you need to have openocd, screen and telnet installed. I’ll be assuming you are using Ubuntu for this.

sudo apt-get install openocd screen telnet

You would need to download a temporary uboot so you can boot the sheevaplug.

wget http://www.downloadsnewit.co.uk/u-boot/recovery/sheevaplug/u-boot.elf

Next, plug the sheevaplug in using a miniUSB data cable, and start screen

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Now, start openocd

sudo openocd -f /usr/share/openocd/scripts/board/sheevaplug.cfg -s /usr/share/openocd/scripts

Then, in a new terminal, connect to openocd

telnet localhost 4444

Now, in the telnet session, run the following

reset;sheevaplug_init;load_image u-boot.elf;resume 0x00600000

Finally, you can begin reinstalling your sheevaplug through the screen.

This can be done by following the instructions at http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install/