iAudio M3 CF mod

[Xoliul]

Okay so now that the display bug with the M3 is fixed, Im trying to get my old M3 back up to 100% reliability
The original firmware won't boot at all with my 8GB Maxflash 120x CF card, rockbox does. Most of the time. Now i've read the other topic about it, but that's all about iPods and iRivers, and as I seem to be the only M3 user here I'd start another topic, also because I've noticed something very strange:
The succes chance of rockbox detecting the CF (very rarely fails), rockbox finding the rockbox folder and so (it tells me about an incomplete installation after bootup, happens frequently if I fiddle with), or rockbox showing all the music files on the card (90% of the time this is the problem), are directly dependent of the hardware contact of the daughterboard and the motherboard. Once I even had these problems corrupt the partition table of the CF. I noticed that when I push on the right side of the daughterboard when the player is open means i get a lot more detection problems. I can get the contact just right by fiddling with it a lot: it detects everything 90% of the time then, but if I try to close the player completely, the backplate cover pushes against the board and messes things up.
Now, I tried with a fully working HD: pressing the contact in all ways that surely messed up the CF, worked 100% of the times. So it's actually rockbox's CF card detection, and not my player's hardware Note that the IDE adapter works fine as well, as in a computer the CF card is always found through the plaer's dock.
It seems like if rockbox doesn't get the best possible contact by an insanely small margin, it fails to detect the CF card fully. Maybe a programmer knows what might be the problem here ? I can read and edit C code, so I wouldn't mind making a custom build for myself if someone could tell me for example where and what read-timeout variable I have to edit ?

[petur]

the only thing I can think of is that there is a bad contact on a connection that is used for CF and not for HDD, but right now I can't think of one without some datasheets near me

[viperman3]

I get the exact behaviour with a 32GB ADATA CF mod on the iAudio X5

I had compiled a bootloader on a v16XXX version (sorry, I don't recall the exact build version of rockbox) and the bootloader would detect the CF card, but when attempting to load the RB firmware, there was always an error on not location the .rockbox folder.  Rarely when it did work, the content in the .rockbox folder would be corrupted.

I have since ruled out the CF adaptor or the CF Card being defective (both are working flawlessly on a CFmodded iriver H320)

perhaps there is a timing issue with the bootloader/firmware that render the 32GB card non-functional.  I have had success with a tiny 256MB cf card (by Lexar)