I can't get the GP32 SMC Formatter to work

[Esn]

About two years ago, I accidentally removed my SmartMedia card before fully shutting off the GP32, and caused corruption of the card. Since then, I haven't been able to figure out how to get anything working again!

When I insert the corrupted SMC, I get an error message from Mr. Spiv's "GP32 BIOS Monitor v0.4": "Exception: Alignment".

So I bought a new SMC on eBay, and formatted it with the "SMC Formatter for GP32":
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/gp32.cgi?0,0,0,0,15,931

With an empty, newly-formatted card, the unit boots, but once I click on "File manager" I get the error message "Exception: Translation".

If I put some files onto the card (using the Windows 7 file manager), at first I get a quick "loading" screen and then an unchanging white screen. The second time I put in the card, I no longer get a white screen, but the "Exception: Alignment" error message.

Does anyone know what might be going on here?

 

[Hooka]

If you read the following gp32 smc stuff on the below site, you'll see GP32 SMC's support FAT16 and FAT12, try making sure when formatting it's in one of these two... Other than that, make sure it's a compatible SMC (3.3v not 5v). Another thing to really consider is longfilenames, make sure you're using a simple, old 8.3 name format and sensical dir names.

http://gp32archives.blogspot.ca/

 

[spaceboygp32]

Sounds like firmware to me... could it be re-flashed?

 

[Esn]

Sounds like firmware to me... could it be re-flashed?

I suppose. I've never done it before.

I tried formatting the two SMCs I have with Mr. Spiv's firmware in the GP32 itself (on the theory that maybe Windows was doing something wrong). Then I put some files onto the card using Windows Explorer and a card reader.

And it works now! I can see my FXE files and they open!

However, Quicklaunch in Mr. Spiv's firmware still gives me the same strange errors, for some reason. So I've turned Quicklaunch off, and have it boot directly to the file manager. So maybe the firmware IS corrupted, but at least for now I think it's probably best if I don't mess with it...

Also, the message after formatting said that one SMC has 2 bad blocks, the other SMC has 3 bad blocks. But apparently, a few bad blocks are very common in SMCs, so this shouldn't be the issue.

Now, I just need to find a way to fix that unresponsive joypad (the diagonals are gone, and even left/right is becoming difficult), and I'm all set...