JBL - SD Card Not Loading Books

[dougf4]

I am making my first attempt at using an external card in my newly received JBL and with minimal success and maximum blood pressure spikes.

I'll describe the situation. My temples begin the throb, my..errrr,,sorry. On to the Jetbook Lite symptoms....

The card is a brand new SDHC 4 gb Lexar. I have verified the card and files by accessing and opening books just fine via the computer.

My JBL firmware is V 15.d.

I "drag" a folder containing a book over to the card while plugged into a USB Reader in my computer.

I have tried, .mobi, .PDF and .txt files.

Also, the books (files) I am using are ones that I have had success opening when loaded directly into the JBL.

I navigate to the book through "Settings" from the main menu and select "SD Card Manager."

I was able to access a very small .txt file that I created in Notepad. This is the only file I have been able to open directly from the card - so the card does appear to be functional.

I have also converted a .mobi book to .txt in Calibre and transferred it to the card, again with no luck. I get an hourglass for about two minutes, then the screen reverts back to the page 1 of the book list with the constant hourglass. I have had a devil of a time attempting to have Calibre load the converted .txt file directly to the SD card.

Here is how the JBL is behaving:

I can drill down from the folder to the book file OK.

It will do one of two things:

1. It will hourglass for about 20 seconds and then default to the "Book" list where the hourglass will just whirl away into eternity until I interrupt it.

2. Just hourglass on a blank screen forever, until I stop it by navigating back to the "Book" list.

Once I interrupt the hourglass, I can then navigate to another book and access it. (One not on the SD card) Leaving the card in the reader does not seem to have any negative effect. I do not have to reset the reader or remove the batteries or such to move on to accessing a book that is loaded directly on the JBL.

I have no idea if I am doing things correctly or not. Since there does not appear to be any Ectacto provided instructions for SD Card use I am just winging it and may well be missing something.

Any help will be much appreciated!

Doug

[GhostHawk]

2 things.

A: make sure the reader is "on" when you insert the card. You should get a small message "updating file list" don't do anything else while that is up.

B once its done updating the file list, just go to books.
You don't need to go into the SD card through settings. Thats doing it the hard way.
Just go into books and they should be there.

Remember, 1 folder deep on the SD card. So easiest for me is to make the folder authors name, and then put all the books for that author that I have into the folder.

Drag and drop should work, as would highlight, then "edit" copy to folder/move to folder.
Let me know if that doesn't fix it.

[dougf4]

GhostHawk - thanks for your help.

That did the trick. I have been conditioned to never plug in a peripheral device while a unit was powered up.

By having the JBL turned on it seems to now be working as advertised.

Much obliged to you!

Doug

[Ken Maltby]

OK, I can describe what I am doing and what works for me that allows me to have
thousands of e-books and other documents on an SD card that I can read with my JBL.

First using a regular 2GB SD card formatted with FAT32. SDHC cards are fine, but the
JBL doesn't require much in the way of high performance or a high "Class Number"/write
speed.

Second, I make use of my PC's file management functions (XP pro) to build a file structure on the SD card. I have an internal USB2 multi-format 3.5" media reader/
writer, that can work with SD cards. The root directory includes the two required
folders: "Books" and "Pictures" (just used as an occasional scratch folder, not part of
my created library of ebooks structure).

Most of the remaining folders in the root directory of the SD card, contain the actual
ebook files. (.pdb, epub, .rtf, .txt, .pdf, ect...) I have a couple of large manuals that
are HTML "ebooks"/folders that contain the .html file and all the support files/folders of
the "ebook"/manual. I generally avoid a structure that involves folders within folders, as
much as I can. I have a couple that have three folders to reach the actual ebook file,
not something I would recommend.

I think the simplest and most direct structure, with the least problems, is to just have
the root folder of the SD with one layer of folders that all contain the ebook files and no
folders.

Many of the ebooks on my JBL are .epub files that were created by "Calibre" using the
"JetBook 5-inch" output profile, after they have been disinfected of their DRM and converted form their original format. (By "on my JBL" I mean on the SD card in my JBL.)

Almost all the old .pdb ebooks that I had for my Pocket PC PDA/GPS were just dragged
and dropped into an SD card folder (in fact most of the folders were named to match
the categories I had for those ebooks.) There are thousands of those alone, that read
just fine off the SD card, without any modification at all.

There have been an occasional ebook that just seemed to want to be a problem,
usually all that would be needed would be to run it through "Calibre". A really rare hard
case or an exceptionally large and complex document might need to be unzipped/deconstructed then have image files or formatting adjusted to work with the
JBL's display. Then such an ebook would likely be handled as HTML.

Plug the SD card into a reader on your PC, to do all your file maintenance. Do not use the USB Cable for anything except messing with built-in user data memory. Do not use the JBL's SD card file management function. (It's probably safe to use it to just delete
a file.)

Luck;
Ken

[Ken Maltby]

Note to self; Self type faster.

[jblitereader]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Note to self; Self type faster.

Haha, way ahead of you guys. Answered this one long ago at this thread.

I really think Ectaco should make people more aware of this. The natural thing most people want to do is turn the device off (or put it to sleep) before they take out or put in the sd card.

[GhostHawk]

Glad you were able to get up and running.