Why is my MiSTer so picky about sdcards?

[lordoftime79]

Hi there, for a long time i have used 2 sandisk sdcards one in the slot and one in a usb card reader but i recently got gifted some new sealed sdcards one being a 512gb card! So i made sure it was formatted in exfat and spent ages copying the old cards to my new one only to find that the mister wont boot - its like it dosnt see it in the slot. Now as i was getting frustrated and wanting to snap the bloody card in two my wife reminded me that back when i first had a mister i tried using no name cards and wouldnt ever see them hence how i ended up with 2 sanddisk cards. How can i get it to not be a picky douche about what cards it likes? As this was a free large capacity card i would really like to get it working.

[akeley]

I'd first make a proper MrFusion install on that card and make sure it works (instead of copying stuff from elsewhere). If it doesn't, then there really isn't much that can be done. Blow on it, perhaps? It's just how it is with SD (and not only) cards. Some are just fake or not-good-enough (especially big & cheap ones), and even genuine can refuse to work, especially in hobby devices. Perhaps it's the modern reincarnation of the Chuntey Field, dunno.

[FieldProgrammableGoatArray]

Yeah, I know this headache well. The Analogue consoles and Krikzz Everdrives are at least as picky about SD cards, if not more so. All I can recommend is to stick to name brand cards (Sandisk, Kingston, PNY, etc.) sold by reputable retailers. I've had good results with the TeamGroup branded cards sold by Newegg, and they tend to be slightly cheaper. Currently using a 512GB Gigastone "Gaming Plus" card with MiSTer (ordered from Newegg when they had it on sale).

[CMR]

Whatever you do don't buy cards off ebay. You'll get a card that your computer says is 512GB, but is really only 8GB. Ask me how I know. I generally buy SD cards off Amazon from the manufacturer's store, but big box stores like Target are also good places to buy them. Also you can't just copy the mister os from one card to another. It has to be made bootable by the installer.

[lagerfeldt]

So i made sure it was formatted in exfat and spent ages copying the old cards to my new one only to find that the mister wont boot - its like it dosnt see it in the slot.

Formatting the card in ExFat and copying the old card data to the new card isn't enough. I couldn't see the below step in your description, so maybe that's what's missing;

It won't boot if you've not flashed the system onto the SD Card. It won't seem to register, like you describe, but that's not related to a hardware incompatibility.

You need to use something like Etcher to flash Mr Fusion on to the card first.

Then boot it up with the newly flashed install on the card and let the system expand the card's capacity to the actual 500 gigs available.

Once that's done you can start copying over relevant user data and run the "update all" script, in that order.

[lordoftime79]

Yea tried that - the thing just wont do anything with the 512gb sdcard.

[pgimeno]

It's all about the partitions in the SD card. Besides the exFAT partition, the MiSTer requires an extra partition with a special ID (A2) in order to boot, and this partition must contain a certain file (uboot.img) copied sector by sector, no filesystem involved.

SD cards that come preformatted with exFAT don't have this extra partition. If you want to do it yourself, you need to repartition the SD card to add the extra partition, copy uboot.img to the sectors of the extra partition and format the rest of the SD with an exFAT filesystem.

This isn't very hard for Linux users, since you only need fdisk, dd and mkexfatfs which are widely available tools, but I guess Windows users need to use an SD preparation program like https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SD-Inst ... Win_MiSTer

Even then, when copying everything from a system other than MiSTer, you lose symbolic links.

[jlancaster86]

Using the SD card for everything is a bad idea anyway. You're better off keeping only the essential files on the SD card (those needed at boot time) and putting everything else on either a USB drive or a network share (preferably the latter).

[lordoftime79]

thanks for the pointer but the options are all greyed out and the part that says image has "update package Incorrect" can you help? ok figured that part out it... now i have a different problem - I dont have uboot in the top box and it seems to need it as i just tried it with "boot + Files" and its still a no go

[jlancaster86]

thanks for the pointer but the options are all greyed out and the part that says image has "update package Incorrect" can you help?

Which program is giving you that error?

It's not listed on the Mr Fusion page, but I recommend Rufus for flashing the image to the SD card.

[lordoftime79]

the mister SD card installer tool isnt showing uboot in the top box like it does on all the bloody pictures and its not working

[jlancaster86]

Use Mr Fusion instead.

1) Download the Mr Fusion image
2) Download Rufus
3) Use Rufus to write mr-fusion-v2.4.img (extracted from the zip you downloaded) to your SD card
4) Put the SD card back in your DE10-nano and boot

[lordoftime79]

Use Mr Fusion instead.

1) Download the Mr Fusion image
2) Download Rufus
3) Use Rufus to write mr-fusion-v2.4.img (extracted from the zip you downloaded) to your SD card
4) Put the SD card back in your DE10-nano and boot

just followed that to the letter and i get the mr fusion is setting up screen then it goes to the menu screen and if i look at the storage it has identified the sdcard size fine... but if i turn off or cold reboot i get nothing no display no lights on analouge board nothing as if there isnt a sdcard inserted!

So ok next plan how would i get it booting from a usb hard disk?

[jlancaster86]

So ok next plan how would i get it booting from a usb hard disk?

You have to boot from an SD card.

Have you tried going back to the SD card that came with your DE10-nano?

[lordoftime79]

its not a new de10 its just i was gifted some sd cards and i wanted to use this one as i currently use a 128gb card and that all works fine... I had this problem before when i purchased a card from amazon that was 256gb it just wouldnt work only cards i got working are sandisk and i dont understand because surely a sdcard is a fucking sdcard! I am so annoyed and frustrated with this bull shit.

[FPGA64]

There are a lot of fake SD cards. By Fake I mean they report the size they state but are actually much smaller. These fakes work partially and then fail. A real Sandisk isnt fake so works. My guess is you have been gifted a fake card,

[jlancaster86]

its not a new de10 its just i was gifted some sd cards and i wanted to use this one as i currently use a 128gb card and that all works fine... I had this problem before when i purchased a card from amazon that was 256gb it just wouldnt work only cards i got working are sandisk and i dont understand because surely a sdcard is a fucking sdcard! I am so annoyed and frustrated with this bull shit.

No—SD cards come in all sorts of classes and standards. And as you've been told already, some devices just don't like some cards, and there are also plenty of fake cards out there that misrepresent their capacity.

My final advice: go back to a card that's known to work and put all your game files on a USB HDD or network share.

[pgimeno]

Sorry, I can't help with that program because I don't use Windows.

I have had that problem of fake SD cards as well. They are modified to report a bigger size than they actually are, and not report errors when writing to an area that isn't in the SD (they are read as zeros). They give me errors when formatting with ext4, because it utilizes sectors all over the disk and not only at the beginning of the card like exFAT does. To identify the actual size of the card I use the Linux program `badblocks` with a write test (option -w). One "128 GB" card was actually 16 GB, and another "1 TB" card was actually 32 GB. I worked around it by reducing the partition size so I could use them to their actual size.

Currently I am using a 256GB (real) card, it works flawlessly.

As for your options, you could use a USB SD card reader and use that as a USB stick. But if it is fake, you'll have problems later on, when you write to the non-existent area and try to read back. That would also let you test its actual size under the MiSTer's Linux.

[akeley]

Buying cards bigger than 64-128 GB for MiSTer does seem a bit pointless tbh. Sure, if you can find some trusted ones cheaply, go for it, but in the long run, if you'd like to have "everything", then it won't be enough anyway. The combined Sega CD, PC, PSX & Saturn sets easily go over 1TB . So, it's either living frugally and just playing some select CD games (what I'm doing now on 128GB) or switching to HDD/network (what I'll probably do once PSX et al drops).

[lordoftime79]

How would i set up network share? I have nas at home and think this would be a cleaner solution?

[Wave]

I'm very happy with a 1TB card (SanDisk 1TB Ultra UHS-I microSDXC SDSQUA4-1T00-AN6MA) as it suits my curation-based approach to libraries with large sets of optical disc images. Even with PSX and SAT coming it's more than enough for my preferences.