5500 : Compact Flash (cf) Slot Failure ?

[karreg]

I'm wondering if I've ended up with a 5500 with a broken CF slot. I've had no luck flashing ROMs (the ROM on the device is what it came with - Sharp 3.10) with two different CF cards (FAT16 formatted) - the amber light goes out, and that is it. Worse, the CF cards don't even show up in the  file manager, or the 'Files' tab. However, if I reboot the machine, then I get a 'CF' icon in the taskbar which allows me to eject the card, but that is it.

Moving to the terminal, running 'cardctl status' shows me that the card is recognized, but the status is forevery '[busy]'. 'dmesg' shows a message similar or identical to :

""cs: socket c03b0800 timed out during reset.  Try increasing setup_delay."

 I tried 'cardctl eject' and restarting the PCMCIA services to no avail.

Does anyone recognize this problem signature ? If the CF slot is indeed broken, are there ANY workarounds at all in terms of updating/flashing the ROM. I've Googled these issues till I turned blue in the face, but haven't found anything remotely informative (the status message does appear in a couple of IRC logs, but no solution, or even a response is to be found).

(Just as an aside, SD/MMC cards are recognized just fine, and almost instantaneously.)

[undrwater]

I have/had the same problem with my 5500 (it motivated me to get the 6000).  Anyway, I spent much time searching for an answer as well...all I seemed to come up with is that some of the pins no longer report from the card.

There is a CF test in the diagnostic menu (D+P, reset), so you can try there prior to doing something drastic.

I finally frankensteined mine with a non-working 5500 i picked up on ebay.  The wife uses it now.

Still...you're not in such a bad spot.  You can still sync, install programs and such...so you have a decent PDA without the CF slot.

Good Luck!