New Proxmark 3 Easy possibly bricked

Words are hard! I never thought I’d be dyslexic but now I’m beginning to think im just undiagnosed, LOL.

Thats the thing, at the end of the day people on forums are just voluntarily helping others. On the flip side, DT is a vendor and I do feel like they should have some kind of dedicated customer service whenever thats possible for them in the future. I spent over $500 USD on my first ever purchase with them and somehow I feel bad emailing them directly and getting @amal to help me.

So are you saying that if I tried to run

proxmark3.exe COMX

It would error out? and simply not let me continue?

The good news is I managed to find a place called Everything ID here in Australia that are currently trying to ask their tech team if it’ll be possible for me to just pay a little bit for their time and help me unbrick it, rather than having to send this back to the USA.

They also sell a Proxmark 3 Easy themselves so its giving me some hope.

DT’s customer service is amazing, really. But for something like this which is pretty niche, I don’t think it should fall on them to help guide people through the process. It’s a notoriously unfriendly device for new users :joy: but the forum is here, the DT discord and also the proxmark forums (though, they can seem unfriendly to people who are completely new to all this).

That being said though, I was new to it all too… I had no idea what I was doing, thus why I was stumped when following the official wiki guide didn’t work. But lots of research and reading helped me figure it out and it was a good learning experience in the end.

If your client/software version is different to the PM3 firmware, it’ll just tell you it’s unable to communicate with the proxmark. It’s a pretty common error which is why it’s often a good idea to keep it updated - probably less of an issue if you don’t use git though.

Iceman’s discord may be able to help you too, possibly even people on the DT Discord but it all depends who is on at what time and who has the time.

Unfortunately your issue is a bit beyond me, but I hope you can get it fixed soon. I was this close to buying a JTAG thinking I’d bricked mine.

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they do actually - you just rely to your order confirmation email. The bigger issue is that it is a niche product as @anon2520759 said - Michelle can only do so much remotely, and same with Amal.

Ultimately, that software wasn’t written by or for DT, and iceman, who is the main author, did much / all of it for free, and still does volunteer his time. If you want personal email support you can become a patreon of his at a high enough level.

The PM3 is first and foremost a research tool, and as a chinese clone, and yes, it has its drawbacks. I hope you get it working!

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Dev may be right here, but we can try some things…

The first thing you should do is remove any and all drivers you may have installed to operate your proxmark3 from Windows… yank 'em out.

The next thing you need to do is see if your proxmark3 is responding at all as a virtual com port when the button is held down during boot… if so then you may have a way out. To test this, open the device manager and expand Ports and watch as you hold the one and only button down while plugging in your pm3 to USB, and then keep holding it down for at least 10 seconds.

I personally use this switchable USB cable for making quick connect / disconnect easier with USB devices…

https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Extension-Upgraded-Strips-System/dp/B07T9BRNHW

If you see a new COM device show up in your device manager under Ports then you have a chance. Next you need to set up ProxSpace so you can pull down and compile the latest RRG / Iceman firmware. Follow the steps in this thread to set up ProxSpace, get the firmware source code, and compile it.

Once you have the compiled firmware, deploying it to the pm3 will require some fancy button work, but it should be possible if you can see a COM port show up when holding down the button and connecting the USB cable.

(have been helping @StrwbrrySam in PM / discord PM)
unfortunately his bootlooader does not respond / work. it just shows usb device was not recognised.

I bricked my pm3 easy to the same state on purpose and then fixed it using jtag as a test, we are now waiting on his order of required jtag equipment (we’re using RPi currently).

I’m in the middle of writing up a guide on un-bricking using jtag, should be up soon under dt info / wikis for others to follow!

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Hey @DonFire,

You’re a good cunt :+1:

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why thanks you! Hopefully very few people need it, but if they do it’ll be there

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