Well, Mine Arrived, But It Isn't Going Well. Any Advice?

[Prometheus]

My A320 from DealExtreme arrived an hour or two ago, and whilst I'm impressed with the build-quality of the unit, my experience so far is leaving much to be desired. I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice, because Googling just isn't getting me anywhere at all, unfortunately.

Firstly, whilst it sees my miniSD Card (a 4GB Class 6 affair from Bytestor), it keeps giving me a message to the effect of "No file found!" when I attempt to access the files on it. It's formatted as FAT32. I briefly formatted it to FAT16 instead, and it saw the files on the card once, but upon attempting to open one of them, it simply hung and had to be reset. Since then, regardless of whether the card is formatted as FAT32 or FAT16, it has continued to claim that there are no files on the card.

Secondly, I am unable to mount the device itself on any of my computers (one machine running Kubuntu 8.04, another running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04, and a third running Puppy Linux 4.2, for whatever it's worth). Has anyone managed to do this? Reinstalling the OS isn't really an option, so any suggestions other than that would be welcome.

Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, the machine has suddenly ceased powering on, even when connected to a USB port or its charger. Trying to reset the device yields nothing. As far as I can recall, there were two bars on the battery when this happened, though. (Or is the battery indicator not fantastically accurate? It did go down to one bar but back up again at one point earlier.) EDIT: Since this occurred, the output of lsusb does not list the A320 anymore.

Does anyone have any advice, please, or have I just gotten a lemon? :/


(Side-note: I use Linux exclusively and know nobody who uses Windows, so any suggestions that may involve this unfortunately won't do me any good.)





EDIT: Whoops, I managed to forget one of the issues I ran into. Added it now.

EDIT 2 - THE SEQUEL: Added a tiny bit more information.

 

[Nintendo]

Sorry, mate. But I think you received a...

 

[Prometheus]

I think you might be right, SONY. Googling with further permutations of the terms I was using has finally led me to this thread. To quote it, in case it's helpful to anyone else who may run into this issue;

QUOTE (Frenchoyster)
Hi,

The support team ask me to post on the forum to check if somebody have an answer for me.

I received my Dinggo A32O last week and I tried it.
- At first I connected the dingoo with USB cable and adaptator to mains power supply. The dingoo turned on. I started to used it for few minutes.
- After that I connected the console to PC, to forward data (roms). I disconnected and started playing and no problem.
- I decided to keep it on connected to mains power supply to charge it up completely.
- After 2 hours, the screen was freeze and the image of the charge level was low.
- I disconnected the Dingoo from mains power supply but the screen was still frozen.
- I used the reset button and tried to turn on again but nothing.
- I tried to connect to mains power supply, nothing. And I tried to connect to PC, nothing.
And now, any case, I can't turn on anymore.
- I've tested an another USB cable, but it's the same
In total, I used the dingoo only for less than 15 minutes !!!

What I need to do ?

QUOTE (iSDHC)
Defective battery. Fried motherboard.



Gah, what a disappointment. I guess I need to get it sorted out now, then.

 

[openthebox]

Wow, sorry, that really sucks.

I thought about buying a couple of A320 for my kids, but I may hold off since there are a few lemons out there.

 

[sterling976]

Ugh. I ordered from the same batch (ordered May 19th, shipped from Hong Kong May 27th, same as Prometheus). I ordered 2, one black and one white. I don't believe they have arrived yet, although I'm now expecting them pretty much any day. It's a mixed bag until I see whether one or both of them work.

Prometheus, did your status page on Hong Kong post ever change from 'The item (<blah>) left Hong Kong for its destination on 27-May-2009?'

 

[Prometheus]

. I ordered 2, one black and one white. I don't believe they have arrived yet, although I'm now expecting them pretty much any day. It's a mixed bag until I see whether one or both of them work.

Good luck.

Mine was white, for what it's worth - I don't know if that makes any difference.

QUOTE
Prometheus, did your status page on Hong Kong post ever change from 'The item (<blah>) left Hong Kong for its destination on 27-May-2009?'

Nope, and neither of the Royal Mail tracking pages available from the Hong Kong Post site's drop-down menu ever provided any information at all (they both simply rejected the tracking number. Typical. :rolleyes: ).

 

[mr_beetty]

. I ordered 2, one black and one white. I don't believe they have arrived yet, although I'm now expecting them pretty much any day. It's a mixed bag until I see whether one or both of them work.

Prometheus, did your status page on Hong Kong post ever change from 'The item (<blah>) left Hong Kong for its destination on 27-May-2009?'

i'm in the US and was able to track mine (using the same tracking number that was used by HK post) through the USPS website. i imagine yours will arrive this week :0)

i haven't had any problems whatsoever with my dingoo even though it's a white one from the "new" batch. i have seen very few posts about lemons, here or elsewhere, and of course you will always see duds in any product. if yours does arrive defective, contact dealextreme or whoever you ordered it from. from what i've heard, DX very good about sending replacements if you show them proof that yours doesn't work (ie a photo). i imagine other sites have similar policies.

btw, if you're in the US, make sure someone is home when it is delivered. registered mail requires a signature, otherwise you have to go to the PO to pick it up.

 

[sterling976]

Thanks for the replies, all. Both my Dingoos arrived today, even though there weren't any further status updates on the tracking page. Seems the black one is a newer model (has the ILI9325 LCD controller as opposed to the older one, which my white Dingoo has) and both seem to be working ok.

Prometheus, sorry to hear you're having trouble, but I am kind of curious what kind of response you get out of DealExtreme or Dingoo support. Could you let us know how it works out?

 

[Prometheus]

Prometheus, sorry to hear you're having trouble, but I am kind of curious what kind of response you get out of DealExtreme or Dingoo support. Could you let us know how it works out?

Eh, no worries. I'm glad to hear your two are fine!

I shall let you know how things go. I put in a ticket with DealExtreme at some point in between my previous two posts in the thread. A previous experience with a problematic item from them went well (although a tad slowly), and I'm pretty much expecting the same this time as well. (Although maybe I shouldn't say that - famous last words and all that... :lol: I'm sure it'll be fine, though.)

 

[surt]

and the files have to have the right extension.

Secondly, I am unable to mount the device itself on any of my computers (one machine running Kubuntu 8.04, another running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04, and a third running Puppy Linux 4.2, for whatever it's worth). Has anyone managed to do this? Reinstalling the OS isn't really an option, so any suggestions other than that would be welcome.
On my Ubuntu 9.04 system the internal flash won't automount (MiniSD does though) but I can manually mount it just fine.

 

[Prometheus]

and the files have to have the right extension.

I know. Unfortunately it still wasn't seeing them regardless of this. :/ Thanks for mentioning it, though.

QUOTE

but I can manually mount it just fine.

That's interesting - mine wasn't mounting the MiniSD when connected via USB, either. I've seen the instructions for manually mounting the internal flash, which I'd love to have tried out - however, I'm really not sure whether to risk getting another machine from the current batch, at this point.

 

[sterling976]

QUOTE
On my Ubuntu 9.04 system the internal flash won't automount (MiniSD does though) but I can manually mount it just fine.


Hmm.. I seem to having the same problem, but the dingoo's internal flash isn't showing up under /dev/sd[a-b][0-9]. Google isn't helping much with this, either.

EDIT: I guess that makes sense, since lsusb doesn't show the device as connected.

 

[surt]

but I can manually mount it just fine.

Hmm.. I seem to having the same problem, but the dingoo's internal flash isn't showing up under /dev/sd[a-b][0-9]. Google isn't helping much with this, either.

EDIT: I guess that makes sense, since lsusb doesn't show the device as connected.

Try "fdisk -l" to get the device path. It complains that it doesn't look to have a partition table which might be why it doesn't automount (appears to work fine though).

 

[sterling976]

[/quote]
Try "fdisk -l" to get the device path. It complains that it doesn't look to have a partition table which might be why it doesn't automount (appears to work fine though).
[/quote]

No dice. Doesn't show the Dingoo's volumes, and trying to mount it with this command errors out:

CODE
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb mount/dingoo1
mount: /dev/sdb: can't read superblock


Meh.. I blame my Ubuntu install. I botched an upgrade last year and never went through the process of reinstalling. I can hit the filesystem when I reboot into Windows, so I'm good to go for now. I'll fight with this some more at a later time.

 

[Atomic Man]

The wall charger that came with my dingoo was defective, I would plug in overnight and it wouldnt charge a bit. I thought I had a defective battery at first but then I tried using the charger for my cellphone (which was actually rated for less amps) and it worked perfectly. The included charger would power the unit, but the battery indicator kept switching between charging and battery, like the charger was rapidly switching on and off.

I couldnt mount my a320 at all in linux (ubuntu 8.10) but I did a fresh install of 9.04 and now it automounts, then I got a new computer and did another ubuntu 9.04 install and now it automounts but in read-only mode. :/

edit: I just reformatted the internal memory and now it mounts RW again

 

[Prometheus]

I have just received my RMA from DealExtreme (like I said, they can be a little slow on these sorts of things ). Should be smooth sailing from here on out.

 

[sterling976]

. Should be smooth sailing from here on out.

Glad to hear it.

 

[Nintendo]

. Should be smooth sailing from here on out.

I forgot?...What's R.M.A. stand for again?

EDIT: It's all good, I got it. Return merchandise authorization

 

[Prometheus]

Just to give a final update, I received a refund today. I'm not sure whether I'll get another A320 at this point, but if I do I think I'm going to wait a while until I feel sure that I wouldn't get another unit from the same batch (as daft as that may sound ).