Support and General Use > Hardware
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:
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
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