GP2X F100 new old stock - firmware update failed

[Tachikoma]

Hello

Picked up a new old stock F100 with firmware 2.0.0, ran great, if a little slow so figured I would update the firmware and emulators. You can probably guess the result. I went for firmware 3.0.0 to start with after digging out an old 64MB SD card, everything went great, it went from "formatting please wait" to "patching please wait" to "complete" then repeated this cycle for an hour and a half until the battery ran out. Now the darn thing is stuck at the gp2x logo, the green firmware 2.0.0 logo then a black screen. The only firmware that actually loads (even with start and select held down) is the same 3.0.0 firmware that broke it in the first place. Does anyone have a known working firmware, SD card, breakout board or dock that can assist me in getting this back to working order? I'm based in the UK so local would be preferred.

Many thanks

 

[Tachikoma]

Minor update, just bought a selection of non-HC SD cards on Amazon, should be here by the end of the week. Will test with different cards and update with links if I find a modern supply of new non-HC cards that can help resurrect anyones GP2X.

 

[Pickle]

have you thought about using open2x?

 

[Tachikoma]

Yeah that was on the cards, was going to try out all the different newer firmwares, but other than the bugged 3.0.0 installer, none of the other firmware updates boot from the SD Card. Tried it formatted FAT16 and FAT32 but it made no difference. As soon as it was soft bricked I tried every firmware from 1.1.4 up to 4.0.0 but only 3.0.0 would actually load, and that was just into the endless format/patch loop. Was thinking of trying the NAND blanker, but it seemed pointless until I can get a SD card that can trigger a firmware update.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Don't you have an old phone with an old SD in it somewhere ?

 

[Tachikoma]

Nothing vanilla SD other than the card I already tried, ordered a few off Amazon and asked around my friends, two of them think they have cards somewhere, one from a GP Caanoo which might just be old enough not to be SDHC.
[doublepost=1543861306,1543851082][/doublepost]Ok, mystery deepens, found another old SD card, and again the only thing that will boot is the 3.0.0 firmware, the NAND blanker doesn't do anything and neither do any of the other firmware. Am I missing something obvious to trigger booting from SD? I'm holding start and select before switching on, then not letting go, it does the black logo then the green 2.0.0 loading screen then goes to black. Is this the right way to do it?

Thanks

 

[Tachikoma]

I think we have a winner!

 

[Tachikoma]

So all back up and running with a 32GB SDHC card, for reference, I will link the card that worked. Got another 3 coming so will test those and report back. If anyone else finds themselves with a semi bricked F100 hopefully this will help if they find themselves without a card or only a SDHC and can't boot from it.

Transcend 2GB SD Secure Digital Card
And the obligatory part number for the far future users when this Amazon link will be gone:

• Item model number: TS2GSDC
• ASIN: B000FGNM6I

 

[Pickle]

so did the gph's firmware also work with that card?

 

[Tachikoma]

so did the gph's firmware also work with that card?

Not tested it yet, was our work xmas party last night, bit of a bad head this morning

Might leave it until the weekend so I can test all the other cards at the same time, but I will update once I have!

 

[Pickle]

Im just curious if its the sdcards or the firmwares

 

[Tachikoma]

I fear it might be a bit of both, I noticed the file size of some firmware files was different for the same firmware hosted on here and openhandhelds, but it might be region differences.

The 3.0.0 firmware hosted on openhandhelds was the one doing the format/reboot of death, but the same firmware hosted here would do a patching/patch failed loop of death with the same card.

I think my initial problem was just the wrong SD card, but it will be worth doing CRC checks on old firmwares to see if there's any corruption. There's only really two good sources for these old files, it might be worth doing a firmware megapack and setting up a torrent to distribute the files with redundancy built in.

 

[Tachikoma]

OK, apologies for the lateness in my response, only tried 4.0.0 so far, but other than a squeeky bum moment when it hung for ages until the red battery light came on, it worked fine. I also at some point dropped a USB lead on the screen and took a nice chunk out of it, so my GP2X is no longer minty fresh...

I will test the other firmwares at some point over the holidays, at the moment I am going through the ~450 games from the 1GB & 4GB megapack and sorting them into stuff I want to keep on the device.

 

[alxm]

Watch out for early 1.x GPH firmwares, those were bad quality and likelier to brick during upgrades. I think some of them even flashed "updates" when there weren't any update files on the card, in which case they would flash random garbage...

After Open2x, the best firmware for F100 is GPH 2.1. Later versions 3 and 4 boot slower and the menus lag more.

Have fun going through all those games