[SOLVED] Gamebuino won't recognize SD card

[Montiey]

My Gamebuino worked perfectly, until I tried another micro SD card. I erased the contents of the 128mb card it came with, and put it on a 1gb card. It no longer works, even when I put it back onto the 128mb card. When I turn it on it just says INSERT SD CARD AND RESTART.
I have formatted it in MS-DOS (FAT), but I do not know if this is FAT 16, 32, or 64, or if it makes a difference.
I downloaded the latest Gamebuino master package, and uploaded all the .hex files (including settings and loader), but it still didn't work.
Part of the problem might be that I tried to play modified game that didn't work (blank screen) but I have tried to modify many other games, and holding C while booting always worked.

It really seems like the problem now is that it won't recognize the SD card.

Help appreciated!

[Jamish]

The only thing I can think of is to make sure your SD card is formatted with 512 byte sectors. That's the smallest sector size, and the Gamebuino needs to write save files to the SD card, which requires having a RAM buffer of one sector. If the sector size is any bigger than 512 bytes, it probably does not have enough memory.

I ripped an SD card image from my 128MB card a while back to use in Simbuino. Try downloading it and then using Win32 Disk Imager to write the .IMG to your SD card. It shouldn't matter what format your card is when you write this image to it.

card image (warning - 128 MB download. This link will probably be dead in a few days to save dropbox space, sorry)
win32diskimager

[Montiey]

Unfortunately, I run Mac. Do you know if there is a way to format a sd card with 512 byte sectors in OS X?

[Jamish]

Using the image I gave you, try following the instructions given by this comment. Be absolutely sure you pick the write disk!

[Montiey]

OMG THANKS!!! Hurray! it works now. Thanks for you help, but why might the disk not format as 512 byte sectors? is this a problem with the format I chose? Or, is there just no clean way to get around this, and you need to manually burn the disk every time?

[Jamish]

OSX has never been too reliable or transparent about how it's formatting stuff in FAT/FAT32, from what I've read. There's probably a way to format it with the right sector size, but burning my .IMG seemed like the quick and dirty fix

But yay! I'm glad it works!

[Montiey]

Hmm.. interesting. By the way, cool game you made! (yes, I also saw the txt file.. )

[Jamish]

Hmm.. interesting. By the way, cool game you made! (yes, I also saw the txt file.. )

I had to look at it again because I had no idea what you were talking about... OOPS. SORRY MAN.

I have a nasty habit of making crude test data, hahaha...