Works every time. Post stupid question, find the answer.
Partition type. For the record I set partition type to numerical code "0b" (W95 FAT32) in Linux fdisk.
Also for the record: a plain `mkdosfs /dev/...` is sufficient.
My last mformat command was `mformat -t 2428 -h 255 -s 63 -S 4 -M 2048 -F p:` which also worked.
Now it works.
Thanks for Rockbox, BTW, it rocks.