H10: CF card size/brand issues when replacing 1.8" Hitachi drive

[CSlick]

I've recently built and installed the newest version of Rockbox firmware and bootloader, then replaced the HDD with an Addonics ZIF to CF adapter (http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/adzifcf.asp ) and CF card. 

I originally put in a 16GB SanDisk Extreme III CF card, but neither the H10 or my laptop (when connected to the H10 in UMS mode) would read the CF card.  I had multiple sizes and brands of CF cards laying around, so after exhausting all the more logical fixes, I started swapping out cards.  I found that while 1GB Pretec CF cards are not recognized by the H10 itself (still give the System Files Missing error on startup), my laptop will recognize the drive when the iRiver is connected in UMS mode (open Device Manager, right-click on the iRiver, select "Volumes" tab, the click "Populate" button).  The CF card appears as normal and healthy, and the correct amount of storage space on the CF card is listed. 

However, when I try to click on the drive in Windows Explorer, I'm told the drive is not formatted (even though I had just formatted it using a USB CF card reader and HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool software).

Has anyone run into a similar problem?  Maybe there is a magic brand of CF card the H10 will agree to?

[MarcGuay]

Adding your test results to this page would be helpful for future modders:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CFModGuide

[Llorean]

I think one problem will be that the H10 has code in flash that runs first, and it has to recognize the card. The "System Files Missing" message is, I believe, coming from code that runs before you ever get to any part of Rockbox.

[CSlick]

I think one problem will be that the H10 has code in flash that runs first, and it has to recognize the card. The "System Files Missing" message is, I believe, coming from code that runs before you ever get to any part of Rockbox.

A coworker suggested this, so we've been digging through the code, trying to figure out how to build a version we can use to flash the H10.  Any suggestions?

[karashata]

The bootloader is stored on flash, and loads the firmware files from the hard drive.  That message is part of the bootloader code, and comes up when the bootloader can't read the firmware files off the hard drive.  It may be that the H10 can recognize the card and just isn't finding the appropriate files to boot the firmware.  However, if the CF card isn't accessable when the H10 is connected to the computer, it's not possible to put the OF files back onto the device in order to get it to boot.

If you still have the original drive from inside the H10 and it still works, you may wish to grab the files off of it and copy them onto the CF card with a CF card reader (if you didn't already do that).  Also, the CF card will need to be formatted FAT32, just in case you had it formatted with a different file system.  Otherwise, it may be that the flash bootloader won't recognize CF cards.

I don't think anyone really wanted to flash the bootloader to the H10's rom since it reads the firmware files from the hard drive and can easily be tricked to load a different firmware by placing an altered firmware loader on the drive.  However, it would be possible to flash a different bootloader to the device if it was really wanted (or needed), though there may be a great risk of bricking the device with a broken bootloader (whereas there's little risk of bricking the device just replacing the firmware loader on the disk).

EDIT:  If you need the code for the flash bootloader for the H10, you can find it here.  It's the BL_H10.rom file in the zip for the 5/6 GB models and the BL_H10_20GC.hex file in the zip for the 20 GB model.

[CSlick]

I have previously done as you suggested, and copied the files from the ZIF drive onto the CF card (via a USB card reader), & tried to boot the iRiver...still get the System Files Missing error.

It seems like we should be able to use the iRiver manual firmware updater to load our own modified bootloader file?

[karashata]

I would believe that you could simply place a modified version of the bootloader file (BL_H10.rom or BL_H10_20GC.hex) onto the root of the device and the bootloader should automatically update itself.  That being said, if the modified bootloader was broken somehow (didn't initialize something correctly, for example) and rendered the device unusable, it would be impossible to fix.  This is why it's much easier just to replace the H10.mi4 or H10_20GC.mi4 file in the System folder on the H10's disk:  no risk of bricking the device due to an improperly flashed or broken bootloader.

[CSlick]

I think one problem will be that the H10 has code in flash that runs first, and it has to recognize the card. The "System Files Missing" message is, I believe, coming from code that runs before you ever get to any part of Rockbox.

Would you think that flashing with the Rockbox bootloader might fix this problem?  I don't know if CF support is built specifically into the Rockbox bootloader, firmware or both?...

[petur]

There are actually two bootloaders at work here: on is from iriver and sits in the flash, it might very well be this one isn't upgradeable. We certainly have no replaceable rockbox version for this.

The rockbox bootloader sits on the disk itself and has the name of the iriver firmware, so we let the iriver bootloader launch our bootloader.

If the bootloader in flash doesn't recognize the card, then we have baaaad luck. But maybe there is something wrong with your partition on the card?

[CSlick]

If the bootloader in flash doesn't recognize the card, then we have baaaad luck. But maybe there is something wrong with your partition on the card?

I have tried multiple brands and storage capacities of CF cards, all of which, when examined with my laptop (via USB card reader) say the partition is formatted and healthy.  I am currently using a 1GB Pretek, as that is the only size/brand combination I've found the H10 will even read the drive information from.

Is there a certain size partition the bootloader looks for (i.e. the size of the original Hitachi HDD)?  I think we could spoof this information if necessary...

[karashata]

I would doubt the bootloader is looking for a specific sized partition, I would suspect it would boot a larger regular drive just as easily as the one it's shipped with as long as the firmware files are on the drive.  However, being as I can't currently afford to buy a larger replacement drive for my H10, I can't confirm this.

It seems likely that the bootloader can't recognize the CF card as a drive and therefore can't boot it.

There are actually two bootloaders at work here: on is from iriver and sits in the flash, it might very well be this one isn't upgradeable. We certainly have no replaceable rockbox version for this.

It is upgradeable, however it doesn't seem that it required much upgrading from the first version.  That being said, if you run the MTP updater utility to upgrade the H10's firmware, it will still upgrade the bootloader to the newest version as well.  I believe it's the bootloader itself that performs the upgrade by looking for the appropriate file on the root of the device (BL_H10.rom for the 5/6 GB models or BL_H10_20GC.hex for the 20 GB model) and flashing that file to the flash rom.  It could be possible to replace the firmware by creating a custom version of that file, however I suspect there would be a very large risk of turning an otherwise-working H10 into a brick with a broken bootloader.

[Mad Cow]

Remember that the CF card has to support ATA specs, most don't, so they don't work with rockbox. Look through other CF replacement threads in the forums and try a card that is known to work in other players. I think that the high capacity A-Data cards work.

[CSlick]

You are exactly correct - I put in an A-Data 266x Turbo card and it worked on the first shot.  I'll have to do more digging now though on the CF cards in general....I haven't seen a good collection of information on the ATA specs of different manufacturers' cards.