[Q] ipaq 3660 - possibly terminal?

[phatsteve]

I think my ipaq 3660 is dead, but I hope not, I was hoping to try and put linux on it. Here's the scenario, I bought it from a guy who says it was working till a rom upgrade went wrong (power cut ).It appears to charge up OK, with the light eventually going solid. Active sync finds it and identifies it correctly but can't connect, advising me to turn off usb connections to stop repeated attempts to connect.A hard reset results in a screen of black and green vertical lines with 2 rectangular boxes near the top which look like text boxes, but with no text.I have download a rom update from HP, but of course it won't install without active sync connecting.Does anyone have any ideas how to save it? I have succesfully upgraded my xda2 a number of times (now ce 6.1) so I have a limited ability.
Thanks in advance

[phatsteve]

I got some more info from handhelds.org, if I press and hold joypad button then press reset, I get a picture of a parrot, this I think is bootloader mode? It seems if I get this far perhaps all is not lost, it appears this is not uncommon with this ipaq. Unfortunately the solution seems to be to connect to a pc with a serial cable to copy over needed files, but my cradle is only usb, and I'm reluctant to spend anymore on what could still be a lost cause.
Any ideas?