[James Bryant]

My wife threw my Jetbook Mini into the sea.*

I have bought a replacement, serial number JBM10012648, firmware 0.4.0. (I have mislaid my notes of the serial number and firmware version of my drowned friend.) I had, of course, backed up my eBook files, both on my hard drive and on a spare SD card, but when I put the SD card in my new machine it does not work. It is a 4 GByte SDHC card, exactly the same size and brand as I used in the drowned machine, as SD, as opposed to SDHC, cards are now virtually unobtainable.

To be more specific I have set the auto turn off to "Do not turn off", inserted the card, pushed the reset button, and left the book for several hours in case it needs time to sort the card contents. (The card contains 3,208 books in 425 sub-sub-sub-directories - I organise by author - root directory on card is eBook, sub-directories are A-E, F-J, K-O, etc., sub-sub-directories are A, B, C, D, E; F, G, H, I, J; etc.; and sub-sub-sub-directories are authors' names.)

I have then tried to open books. The .txt files (which are all small - 2-5 pages max) open after a delay of over a minute, and page turns, which were virtually instant on the old machine, take several seconds. The .fb2 files do nothing for nearly a minute, then announce that book formatting is in progress. Formatting, which, even ignoring the initial delay, seems to be slower than on the old machine, and the invariable result, with .fb2 files prepared on Calibre and which worked on the old machine, is a single page book - and that page is blank. Attempts to turn the page yield messages "This is the last page" or, going back, "This is the first page". If I now press the Back (ON/OFF) key the author (sub-sub-sub-) directory displays for a fraction of a second and then the display jumps back to the machine root directory with the SD card directory missing. If I turn off the machine and then on again the missing SD card directory reappears a fraction of a second later than the display of the items in the machine directory.

If I put an .fb2 file in the machine internal directory, or in a specially-created subdirectory ("eBooks") in the internal directory, the machine ignores it - and if I try to open the sub-directory reports that it is empty.

I have used "Upgrade Patch" in "Settings" to reinstall firmware 0.4.0 with JBM_Eng.pkg downloaded from Ectaco's website but the behaviour is unchanged. Is the book faulty? Or is the fault in firmware 0.4.0 and I should be using an earlier version? If this is the case where might I get it?

* It was an accident and I forgave her at once - but it's far too good a story to forgive AND forget.