Delayed firmware update due to legal dispute?

[MichaelGade]

Originally Posted by T_Frain_K

Yes, me. And I expect most others as well.
It´s a microSD-card with 2 GB (note: no SD-HC).

THE INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS WRONG (kept for history).

That pissed me off, why should I be the only one without a working SD card.

So I decided to investigate. And the problem goes a little something like this.

Well I got my SD card from Bookeen (in the deluxe package) AND IT DIDN'T WORK OUT OF THE BOX. So I reformatted it as FAT, still no go. And eventually just pulled the sucker out and forgot about it (hey 512 Mb is a lot of books, and with no folderview you are not filling it up any time soon).

So what's the problem? Well the problem is that if you just format the card as FAT, you probably get FAT32. And that wont work. You NEED to make sure its FAT16.

Being on Linux it never actually dawned on me that a device made in this millenium would REQUIRE FAT16, go figure. (The user "guide" (pfth) has nothing on this).

So... the solution goes a little something like this.

mkdosfs /dev/sde -F 16 -I

mkdosfs = "Make totally useless filesystem"
/dev/sde = The SD card (change this to whatever the SD card is on your machine).
-F 16 = Make the filesystem even more useless (thats the key).
-I = "I know, just do it" (without this, Linux will try to stop you from making what it thinks is a very bad idea).

And thats it, the SD card works like a charm.

This is a rather important destinction, especially when the device just destroys a FAT32 filesystem.

[tompe]

This is a bit strange. It should work with FAT32. Maybe there is a problem with the card and FAT16 is not as sensitive to this problem?

[MichaelGade]

Originally Posted by tompe

This is a bit strange. It should work with FAT32. Maybe there is a problem with the card and FAT16 is not as sensitive to this problem?

Well the device itself is FAT16. (Model No. CYBGEN310B)

And i'm not feeling lucky enough to try and reformat that to FAT32.

It could be that they just need to be the same. Does anybody have the balls to try this out.?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by MichaelGade

Well the device itself is FAT16. (Model No. CYBGEN310B)

And i'm not feeling lucky enough to try and reformat that to FAT32.

It could be that they just need to be the same. Does anybody have the balls to try this out.?

Checking my gen3...

invid:~# fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 2420.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 2032 MB, 2032664576 bytes
41 heads, 40 sectors/track, 2420 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1640 * 512 = 839680 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
   
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        2421     1984899+   6  FAT16

Command (m for help): q

invid:~# fdisk /dev/sdb

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 524 MB, 524288000 bytes
256 heads, 63 sectors/track, 63 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16128 * 512 = 8257536 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x16c3fdf0
   
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1          63      508000+   b  W95 FAT32

The file system on both the internal partition (sdb) and the SD card (sda) is vfat.

So the internal partition is FAT32 and the SD card is FAT16 on my Cybook. The reason I have FAT16 on my SD card is probably because I have not reformatted it since I bought it and new SD cards usually have a FAT16 partition.

How big is your SD card?

[T_Frain_K]

Originally Posted by MichaelGade

That pissed me off, why should I be the only one without a working SD card.
[snip]
So what's the problem? Well the problem is that if you just format the card as FAT, you probably get FAT32. And that wont work. You NEED to make sure its FAT16.
[snip]

Glad you worked it out. Would have surprised me if it wouldn´t have worked with you.

I reformatted my card once, too. Kinda messed up with unplugging too soon, and not realizing anything wrong till I recognised that my position in books was not remembered anymore.

It seems that windows chooses to format memory cards with fat16 by default (FAT is the only option it lets you choose.). Or, at least, it is for <= 4GB media.

[MichaelGade]

How big is your SD card?

2 Gb. its the one I got with the device.

I dont like that your device is FAT32, when mine is FAT16. (and before you ask, no I didn't reformat the device

Edit:
Did a reformat of the device to FAT32 (backup the 'system' folder first)
With no problems.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by MichaelGade

2 Gb. its the one I got with the device.

I dont like that your device is FAT32, when mine is FAT16. (and before you ask, no I didn't reformat the device

I might have changed that myself. I actually a long time ago tried to format the internal partition as ext2 to see if it worked (it did not). When I restored it I do not know if I formatted it exactly as before...

[MichaelGade]

Hm.. Still not a happy camper.

I did.
1: Wipe the SD.
2: Diskcheck on the SD (no errors)
3: Remount it (no problems).
4: Transfer the Baen free library to SD card (~64 Mb) (takes about 20 minutes).
5: Just to make sure, go to terminal and do a 'sync' (takes another 20 minutes).
6: Unmount SD.
7: Unplug device (the device now does not come up, this seems to be the case every time i change anything on the card (tried 3 times, same result every time)).
8: Reset device (it comes up again (pheww)).
9: Plug the device back in (the SD card now mounts as read-only <-- Not good)
10: Diskcheck on the SD card now reveals lots of errors.

This looks like a broken SD card (I dont have a known working card, so cant really test this).
Will try to pick up another some time next week ('ish).

[Olympus]

Originally Posted by Snuffi

Good god, I write too long. Who's gonna read such an endless rant...

I have too much time to spend: instead of playing around with yesterdays new firmware I chose your rant ;-)

[GeoffC]

I gave in trying to use the SD card - and had NO problems since .....

[Snuffi]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I gave in trying to use the SD card - and had NO problems since .....

I have a very interesting issue with my SD card but have been too lazy so far to investigate:

When I insert the SD card in my card reader I can read and write to it fine. When I put that SD card into the Cybook I can read all the books I put onto it without any problem.
If, however, I connect the Cybook to my PC I cannot read or write the SD card. It tells me the card is not formatted and if I format it while connected to the PC I can copy stuff over to the device but cannot read it once I disconnect the Cybook. When I reconnect it tells me the SD card is not formatted/unreadable again.

The internal memory works fine when connected to the PC, no issues with that one.

It's pretty weird but I haven't really put much effort into it as it works fine as long as I put my SD card into the card reader and then back into the Cybook. I get the impression, though, that there might be some issue with the controller in the Cybook

[Godzil]

Originally Posted by Snuffi

Actually, not unusual at all. If a new device doesn't offer more or the same in a better way, what would be the customer motivation to buy one? It's logical that a company tries to enhance a new product as much as possible to increase sales. It's also logical that Bookeen dedicates more time to their newly released and planned device (which bring in the money) and less to enhancing the already sold ones. They just shouldn't promise stuff they don't keep...



100 MB??? I know of a Linux distribution for a PC which fits into just 50 MB. What is there and is there even enough ROM in the device for all of that? I suspect in those 100 MB is probably some windows software also or it's some kind of development kit with additional stuff...

No it's only netronix who don't know how to make a firmware, that's all (there are plenty of unneed files, big files, pictures (menu are pîctures etc.)

By the way Bookeen use no work from Netronix for their firmware. (and the cooler is not an EB600, but an EB600EM)

[Krystian Galaj]

Two points.

1. Cybook isn't the only device with severely lacking firmware, and problems with customer support - there's a thread about iRex a few pages back with very similar posts.

2. On official Bookeen blog, in the comments in the last blog from August 27 Bookeen is answering people more often than usually - and, after a month's silence, in response to question posted today, Bookeen wrote:

Dear users,

We are very sorry for the delay in 1.5 (Mobi) and 2.0 (Adobe) firmware's release.

We should be able to release it very soon. Indeed, nearly all verifications have been done.

Please, be sure that we are doing our very best to provide you with a satisfactory solution.

Best regards,

Bookeen Team

The text in bold provides some additional information - I wish there was more factual stuff, but at least they say the firmware is done, testing is in progress and nearly finished. So maybe we'll see this firmware within a month or two after all, and maybe it won't brick anyone's device after such thorough testing.

[T_Frain_K]

You missed the most important point:

We should be able to release it very soon.

How very exciting

[Godzil]

aka -> Next Monday