I am working with a Jetson TX2 and I am wondering if it is possible to remove the storage built into the board and use it as an external drive for another computer? I know the TX2 uses soldered-on eMMC storage and that it is possible to attach some eMMC chips to controller boards to use similarly to a flash drive. My question is, has anyone done this with a Jetson’s chip, or is it even possible?
I want to do this since the TX2 I am working with is not booting and after a lot of troubleshooting and trying to recover my lost data this is the only thing I can think to do.
I can’t answer as I don’t know about the actual memory in the Jetson, but what you are suggesting is how an actual data recovery service would work with solid state memory recovery on otherwise failed hardware. The concept is valid, but there might be proprietary or otherwise unpublished information. If you know the exact chip (and it would be up to NVIDIA to state what it is if it is available), then perhaps transplanting it to another TX2 of the same model would work. There is a lot that can go wrong if you don’t know exactly what you are doing with a hot air rework station, but even if you know what you are doing, it is risky.
Have you tried cloning? Is this a Jetson developer’s kit and not something on a third party carrier board?
May I know what could be the cause that your TX2 is not booting anymore? Is it a hardware or a software problem?
If it’s because error during Kernel or DTB customization, you could try to reflash only the original Kernel or the device-tree without reflashing the entire filesystem, there are options for the flash script to do that:
Also have you tried accessing via serial? Trying to see the Kernel messages while booting?
The idea of cloning the image is good too, it would be worth trying the image on a different TX2. We have use the following steps to clone and reflash the TX2, you could use it as reference. https://developer.ridgerun.com/wiki/index.php/Cloning_TX2
The EMMC has 153 small balls with 0.27mm diameter in a 0.5mm grid. You need to connect about 20 of them.
You need experience and equipment for BGA soldering and BGA reballing. Yes, there are companies that can handle this. Most people only would make things worse, me included. So you’d better forget that.
