I've just tried a fresh download of 1.4 straight onto the Pandora using Midori and it ran fine.
I'm wondering if there is something about the you are getting the files onto the Pandora that is causing the problem, but I've no idea what it could be.
Here is something you can try:
Open a terminal and go to the directory containing the SD installer 1.4 PND. Then enter:
You should get:
Code:
b3e7ab476fd28c4e40c68ca7e70f6452 sd_install.pnd
If the number does not match then the file is corrupt.
You can also do this for the firmware file. If you are using the hotfix 5 file, you should get:
Code:
c26e2c326fe74a5ca5ba5597c87d2e21 pandora-rootfs-HF5.tar.bz2
The name might be different but the number should be the same.
You could also try running the PND with the pnd_run program from the terminal:
That might give you some more information on why it isn't running.
I had a similar thought. The firmware should be fine (since its an archive the files inside should be ok) but certainly downloading the PND on windows then copying to an SD is corrupting it somehow. I downloaded the PND on the pandora and ir ran fine (both 1.3 and 1.2). It fails to explain why 1.3 was installing but not booting though.
I tried using CloneZilla to make a clone, but it didn't boot - which I find really odd. I'll try again, the first time I cloned an 8gb card and wrote to a 16gb. Next time I'll try the same card for both r/w.
Also, I tried Debian using 1.2 and it installed just fine. Debian is pretty good, though for now I'll stick to the Zaxxon release as I have too much to try playing with on the official firmware. Maybe if I find my camera (mislayed it) I'll use that Trancend 16gb SDHC for Debian as it's fast.
EDIT: Ok, seems like if you save the pnd to an NTFS formatted partition (either on the PC or directly from the Pandora) it's getting corrupted or something. I can happily confirm that 1.4 is installing latest firmware as I type. Also, I suspect that CloneZilla may work if only re-writing the system partition, perhaps writing the whole "drive" clone was messing the boot partition or something. I'll let you know when I test it more.
EDIT 2: Right then, there's some lessons to be learned here. Don't buy shitty PNY class 10 SDHC cards. I found one of my trancend class 10 16gb cards (I have 2, one is still in my missing camers). Installed in the PNY cards (again I got 2), I was had a slow slow OS, which would invariably have to be reset after 5 minutes cause things were going wrong. The trancend (which was the same price) is fast - relly fast, almost as fast as the NAND - and I also used SWAP which just killed my PNY altogether. Now I need to find that damn camera with the other Trancend. I may still use the PNY card for storing stuff, if it doesnt corrupt the files (I think it was only having problems when being used as an OS since I have stored data on it perfectly normally with no corruption for a few months). I can honestly say, my class 10 Trancend works way faster than the Sandisk 30mb/s card - it's almost twice as fast, half the price and double the size.
EDIT 3: Well, this is mental - CloneZilla works. I tested it by making an image of the Trancend 16gb and writing it to the shitty PNY 16gb card. The wierdest thing about it is the PNY card booted almost as fast as the original Trancend card did, and the OS seemed to run fine. So installing on the Trancend and cloning to the PNY works great, but installing straight to the PNY cards (both) was sluggish and led to major corruption that eventually, after 3 or 4 boots inevitably led to it becoming non-bootable. I tried installing various things and rebooting, like the codec pack and it worked fine using the cloned trancend image. I can't understand this at all. I know the PNY cards were ok when using them on the PC, and they seem to be fine on the Pandora unless you setup an OS on them... that's bizarre. Also, just as a side note, I also cloned using norton ghost 11.5.1 and the image ran perfectly, again to a PNY 16gb card. If you are a little intimidated by command line tools (though clonezilla is really very simple to use and there's no typing needed) you can use ghost to clone your card. There's pro's and con's - eventually we'll get ext4 and ghost won't handle that, but for now it's easier and probably offers an ability to resize partitons to a smaller size, which I don't think clonezilla can do, though cloning to bigger partitions/cards is easy. Hope this info is of some use to someone - maybe MarioPandio.
Finally a question. Does the current firmware support squashFS?