What am I missing? Need help troubleshooting ePic cards

So I am an experienced unix sysadmin with beard, but I could not be more of a noob when it comes to RO, so keep this in mind.

I’m trying to get into the community and decided to buy an ePic card from ROOL as it was 16GB, had RO5 and NutPi combined.

The first one I received was a dud. Didn’t boot in my Pi 3 nor in my Pi Zero. There was no activity light when powering on, it was like I didn’t insert any sd card into the device.

Assuming a firmware problem, I plugged it into my Win10 netbook and got BSOD instantly. Any further attempt was greeted with the same result. Netbook wouldn’t even boot with the SD inserted.

So I contacted ROOL and I received the replacement today.

The second card does the exact same thing! The odds that I received 2 faulty SD cards seems astronomical, but I cant find another explanation.

So I walked into town and bough a USB-SD card reader so I could run RO and look at the ePic SD in case I was missing something, but they don’t show up in the iconbar. Tried other SDs, and they show up in the iconbar no problem.

tl;dr
Both SD cards seem to be broken

So…
Am I missing something or has ROOL sent me another broken ePic card? I need to return the 1st card back and haven’t contacted about the second card appearing faulty yet, but if I’m not being thick, I may aswell send them both back together.

I don’t really wont to bother ROOL again if I’m being a nib.

Thanks in advance

Managed to have it show up on a Win10 machine use USB-SD reader (was using internal), and both show up in Win10 disk manager as a 5.71GB raw drive.

Something isn’t adding up here. Other SDs appear fine.

As far as I can see, you’ve done pretty much what I’d have done. Trouble is there’s no way to read a RISC OS formatted card without RISC OS (that I know of). I do suspect you have two duff cards.

So I walked into town and bough a USB-SD card reader so I could run RO and look at the ePic SD in case I was missing something, but they don’t show up in the iconbar.

That’s a bit odd. My USB-SD card reader shows up even without a card in. It just says Drive Empty if I click on it. You realise it’ll probably show up on the icon bar as a USB drive, and not an SD card icon? I’d try the card reader without a card in. It may be that the card reader is one of the few incompatible ones (seeing as you do seem to be being unlucky! ;-) )

I’ve had a Pi that wouldn’t boot RISC OS no matter what I did – several cards mangled as a result, and no activity light either. Gave it up and binned it in the end.

“I’ve had a Pi that wouldn’t boot RISC OS no matter what I did”

Fortunatly I have RO running on both Pi3 and PiZero, so glad it isn’t that!

“Trouble is there’s no way to read a RISC OS formatted card without RISC OS”

I can see the RO partition on my Pi cards in disk manager, and if I couldn’t, I should at least be able to see PiBoot partition on the ePic cards. Not a raw unpartitioned disk.

“As far as I can see, you’ve done pretty much what I’d have done”

That’s disappointing. I was really hoping I was being an idiot and missed something. I really want to have a play with NutPi software.

In which case, I’m going for “definitely unlucky”!

And as an outside chance I’d go for a dodgy power supply but think “unlucky!” may be the winner by a mile.

“And as an outside chance I’d go for a dodgy power supply but think “unlucky!” may be the winner by a mile.”

It’s not a cheap-chinese one, it’s an official CE certified RPi psu, so seems unlikely. Plus I’d expect it to nuke my other SD’s. Why only ePic cards? Now that you mention it, I wonder if ROOLs equipment might have a power issue?

I had some bad luck with ROOL deliveries, including a completely empty C/C++ CD, a broken NutPi SD-Card and a broken SD-microSD-adapter.

“I had some bad luck with ROOL deliveries”

That’s discouraging.

Thanks to all for making me feel sane! I’ve sent off another e-mail to ROOL. Hopefully we’ll work it out.

An SD card with nothing but a RISC OS (FileCore) filesystem on it will look like an unallocated disc in gparted and similar Linux tools, but a card intended for booting RISC OS will have a FAT partition which will look properly like a FAT partition.

I bought 2 × 2GB OS micro SD cards and 1 16GB Epic version… intending to be able to use RISCOS on my RPi 3s at last !
I have tested 2 of the 3 so far (1 of each type) – resulting in just a blank screen.

The onboard REd LED light comes on, I get 2 flashes of the green LED, and then it just hangs with a totally blank screen each time.

Replacing it with a Standard (RPi) uSD card continues as expected with the 4 raspberries and normal boot up into Linux.

Having been away this weekend, (and because of the failure if these new RISCOS uSDs NOT taken my RPis) I will make some further checks on Monday – more RPis and the 2nd 2GB RISCOS uSD card to see if they can be made to work or be read on anything.
Somehow, seeing that others have been having simialr problems, I’m not optimistic.

I get 2 flashes of the green LED

You’re lucky. I didn’t even get that.

Tried again this afternoon on an older RPi and both 2GB and 16GB Nutpi types worked.
Cabled ethernet in place in each case…

On my RPi3 with RPi touchscreen I was getting ‘low voltage’ indications with the power supply I used for that – but then I isolated the touch screen, and used a separate monitor – and it boots up okay now with both types of card (April 13th)

Back to the PiTop with a RaspberryPi 3 in it and – on the card as supplied – no progress: stops at 2 green flashes – just before it ought to display the colour test blend screen.

Looks nice on the New Liliput 13.3" TK1330 Touchscreen (or not on cheaper model) Full HD 1920×1080 display … and the touch screen ‘sort of’ works – (only a quick test – and I had a mouse plugged in as well).

So – DO I give up on it ever working with the RPI3+PiTop configuration – or do I need to add the Add-on bits for the PiTop from CJE that I bought months ago – before I can expect the card to complete booting ??? … Or do I give up and put a Pi 2 into it 8-(

I have enroute a dual-microSD switched card adapter so that I can swap the image easily between Linux and RISCOS – and without having a loose microSD card getting lost !

I have a 2A psu, and only 1 usb device plugged in (Logitech wireless HID dongle) so I doubt it’s low voltage problems.

Still, you’re getting activity LEDs, even if only 2 blinks. I have nil, so probably a separate issue.

Just an update:

ROOL noticed the ePic cards were being damaged in the post (found hairline cracks in the back under light)

They sent a replacement, this time the card was taped to the top of the letter inside the envolope and they stiffened it with a piece of cardboard.

It worked. Now I have a working ePic.

Thanks to everyone that helped and thanks to ROOL for getting it sorted out. :=D