Author Topic: Cannot Flash  (Read 3510 times)

band-aid

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Cannot Flash
« on: December 03, 2007, 05:08:09 pm »
I've been working on getting Debian EABI installed on my SL-C3200 for the past few days. I tried the yongun kernel but had nothing but trouble out of Uboot. I've decided to go with an angstrom kernel and the stock EABI rootfs. Problem is, I cannot seem to get it to flash. No matter what I do (I've done complete NAND restores and HDD restores) I cannot get it to flash correctly. I put gnu-tar, zImage.bin, and updater.sh from the angstrom installation package onto my SD card ( I have tried CF too) and pop it in. I boot up holding OK and choose menu 4, SD (or CF), and click the (Y) button. It restarts as I expected but it reports "SD not found!!" error (1). It does the same thing with a CF card but the message shows CF not found rather than SD. I used both slots extensively before and after my attempts meaning that they are working correctly. The SD card is formatted with mkfs.vfat -F 16. Any suggestions?

Chero

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Cannot Flash
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2007, 02:06:20 am »
Quote from: band-aid
I've been working on getting Debian EABI installed on my SL-C3200 for the past few days. I tried the yongun kernel but had nothing but trouble out of Uboot. I've decided to go with an angstrom kernel and the stock EABI rootfs. Problem is, I cannot seem to get it to flash. No matter what I do (I've done complete NAND restores and HDD restores) I cannot get it to flash correctly. I put gnu-tar, zImage.bin, and updater.sh from the angstrom installation package onto my SD card ( I have tried CF too) and pop it in. I boot up holding OK and choose menu 4, SD (or CF), and click the (Y) button. It restarts as I expected but it reports "SD not found!!" error (1). It does the same thing with a CF card but the message shows CF not found rather than SD. I used both slots extensively before and after my attempts meaning that they are working correctly. The SD card is formatted with mkfs.vfat -F 16. Any suggestions?

repartition the card. I used to have the same problem with some cards, repartitionning them helped.
HP-95LX -> HP Jornada 680 -> SL-C860 -> SL-C3100 -> Fuji u810 -> SL-C1000 -> HTC uni -> SL-C860 -> SL-C760.
March 12 2009 : Back because the Zaurus is one of a kind.
SL-C760 : pdaXrom
Pandora pre-ordered -> received and tested : great device but not my cup of tea -> sold.

ZDevil

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Cannot Flash
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2007, 02:26:29 am »
What is the problem of uboot you came across? Lots of people have not so pleasant experience so they may be able to help you out.

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My EeePC 701 Black = Debian (Lenny) on IceRocks + Transcend SDHC Class6 8GB + 2GB RAM
My Zaurus SL-C3200 = Debian EABI (kernel 2.6.24.3-yonggun) on a swapped internal Sandisk Extreme III CF 16gb
My Debian EABI feed: http://matrixmen.free.fr/zaurus/debian/
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band-aid

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Cannot Flash
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2007, 03:32:58 pm »
Uboot strikes me as buggy. I had a terrible time getting my internal drive recognized in the "emergency" console and it ended up not having the utilities that I needed. I was trying to switch out my rootfs. I also don't like the way it gives you nothing to fall back on short of a NAND restore should the emergency console not be capable of what you need.

On the subject of my inability to flash, I've repartitioned my SD card into a single large 31000 cylinder partition. Formatted it with mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/mmcblk0. I then put updater.sh, gnu-tar and zImage.bin. It still shows the same error. Is it possible for the zaurus flashing utility to not load the driver for the SD and CF card readers?

band-aid

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Cannot Flash
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2007, 07:50:34 pm »
I'm Replying to this because I got it straightened out and want to outline the process that I used to do so. Maybe I'll help someone.

My theory is that the flashing utility does not support SD or CF cards that are over 1GB. My card was something like 1016MB.

This is what I did as an experiment.

This is in the terminal on my laptop

Code: [Select]
1. fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
2. o - blow away the partition table
3. n - create new partition
4. p - primary partition
5. 1 - first partition
6. 1 - starting cylinder
7. +512M - 512 megabytes after the starting cylinder
8. n - new partition
9. p - primary partition
10. 2 - second partition
11. enter - default: one cylinder after our first partition
12. enter - second partition goes to the end of the card.
13. w - write the partition table

This splits it into two partitions, both of which are less than 1 gig. This is your goal, if your SD card bigger your partitions may need to be bigger or more numerous. UNDER A GIG.

next lets format them

mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/mmcblk0p1
mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/mmcblk0p2

At this point all you have to do is copy the files you need to flash onto the card and your good to go.