cant reflash my pandora (boot from sd1 doesntshow up)

[n8duscher]

hello

i want to reflash my pandora but i cant. i downloaded the lates firmware and stuck to the manual.
at the point where i have to restart it ("R-button and powerswitch"), there should come a menu, where i can select "boot from sd1".
the menu appears, but no where it says "boot from sd1".

i tried it with multiple sd cards. I had no problem formatting them (fat32) and unzipping the newest firmware.
i formated it on the pandora, cant format it on my pc bcs i broke my cardreader.
but that shouldnt be the problem right?

whats the problem then ? please help me.

 

[elw3]

Have you tried the other slot? Only one slot can boot from SD, at least till you reflashed to a newer bootloader.

 

[n8duscher]

yes. it didnt work either

 

[levi]

How big are your cards? The older bootloaders have a problem where big partitions take too long to identify somehow, but that's been improved more recently. I used gparted to make a small partition on the first couple of GB of my 64GB card, and reflash using that mostly, and that's always worked for me.

 

[notaz]

I don't think partitioning will help, it's the longer init time that large cards sometimes take that is the problem, older bootloader just isn't waiting long enough. You need to find smaller/older cards, those usually work.

 

[levi]

Ah, my card is a Sandisc Ultra card, so perhaps me paying more for it has something to do with it working too.

 

[n8duscher]

i think i did something wrong

when i extract the the zipfile i will get 5 new files right?
boot.scr, boottf.tgz, README.TXT, rootfs.img, rootfs.md5.
all on an empty sd card.

is something wrong there?

 

[TrashyMG]

is something wrong there?

nope that should be correct.

 

[n8duscher]

I will watch out for a smaller card.
thx for the help.

 

[___]

@n8duscher what firmware are you on actually what size sd cards did you try?

@notaz is it possible to upgrade directly to the latest firmware without upgrading to a firmware inbetween first, if you are running an ancient version?

 

[notaz]

Assuming you mean a reflash - yes you can reflash to any version from any version. Well except 1GHz units can't run the very first firmwares because the kernel doesn't yet support the newer DM3730 SoC.

I think ED said he has recently received for repairs at least one pandora running the very first Zaxxon firmware (that Craig used to flash on the very first Pandoras) and reflashed that unit to the latest without problems.

 

[levi]

It's possible to just reflash the bootloader, but you'll need a working SD card to do that too. And once you've got a working SD card you may as well reflash everything to the latest version. I don't know how to reflash the bootloader from within the OS, assuming that's even possible.