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Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!

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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #10 on: 05 / August / 2014, 00:20:14 »
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Quote from: voxmagna on 04 / August / 2014, 05:31:15
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There is a menu option in the 'Miscellaneous' -> SD Card menu for that :  Swap partitions [ 1/1 ]

I found that already in Miscellaneus stuff - but mine stays stuck on (1/0) and doesn't do anything. The camera still boots into CHDK, which it wouldn't do if the partition had actually been switched.
Well, it seems there are two possibilities.

The first possibility is a bug in the A650 port. The Swap Partition code is common to every CHDK port and it works fine on all other cameras. So that only leaves an incorrect stub. However, a quick look at stubs_entry.S shows 100% agreement with the sig finder.  So that does not appear to be the problem.

The other possibility is something unexpected in the setup of your dual partition card.  Did you low level reformat that card after all your previously reported experiments and let STICK set it up correctly?  If not, you might want to try that.


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I was thinking a bit more about this. Most will be shooting JPEGs and RAW.  I'm saving JPEG + DNG and the file sizes for 12Mpix super fine are about 7Mb and 15 Mb respectively. I appreciate that CHDK is using the Canon hooks, but if the oem Canon file structure was kept on the FAT16 partition and RAW saved on the second FAT32 partition, the card would behave normally (with reduced storage space) for JPEGS without partition switching and being a nuisance in some print processing shop on holiday. For the A650IS,  partition sizes for about 640 pictures (no video) would come out at about 4.5Gb for JPEGS in FAT16, with RAW DNG using the rest of the 16Gb card as FAT32.
An interesting idea.  I kind of like it and would use it with my G10 ( 14.7Meg sensor !) if it was available.

But trying to make the Canon f/w recognize dual partitions,  or even finding a tricky way to swap partitions on the fly when you want to save a RAW file, would be extremely tricky and fraught with peril.  Not to say it could not be done,  but for the little bit it would gain you I'm not sure there is anyone in a big hurry to take on such a project just so older cameras have a somewhat better way to save RAW files.

Might be better to just figure out why you can't swap partitions with the CHDK menu.
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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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Offline voxmagna

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #11 on: 05 / August / 2014, 05:22:36 »
Thanks. I first tried a 'virgin' card straight out of the packet, which is what a newbie would probably do, but I will retry the Stick after a low level re-format in the A650. I am now more confident of getting a 16Gb card to dual partition and work.

The one thing missing from CHDK, Stick and Wasp is there seems to be no confirmation that something has changed. At one point I didn't think 'make card bootable' did anything when OK came back so quick, but I have now checked after dual partitioning with Mini tool wizard and it does work. I would be more confident if CHDK first verified and came back with 'This card is not bootable' then it got changed after executing 'make card bootable'.

I found a similar thing with Stick and Wasp - lack of a verify routine at the end. The first time I tried I had the card lock switch set. Those apps might be defeating the card lock switch, but I do know of other applications that can appear to run fine and return actioned confirmed OK, when nothing has been written to the card.

Whatever was going on with the card reader I used, both Stick and Wasp appeared to execute normally (Stick gave a 'no errors' log file) with no error check at the end that my card had been partitioned. There are many card types (and readers) to choose from so I do understand that sometimes compatibility issues can arise.

I stuck with this to get CHDK to work on my 16Gb card, but I'm sure some would have given up a lot sooner.
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Offline zeno

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #12 on: 05 / August / 2014, 08:05:54 »
STICK (and WASP) should certainly detect and warn you if the card is not writable (i.e. locked) - though STICK merely reports what Windows tells it. Similarly, STICK only reports errors if Windows commands (to read or write files or partition information) fail in some way.

I should say that more than 98% of the problems I get emails about are from Windows users with old cameras and cards bigger than 4Gb (and these days running 64-bit Windows 7/8). Mac OSX and Linux users (whose operating systems let you see both partitions at the same time) have a much easier time.
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #13 on: 05 / August / 2014, 08:36:44 »
Quote from: zeno on 05 / August / 2014, 08:05:54
I should say that more than 98% of the problems I get emails about are from Windows users with old cameras and cards bigger than 4Gb (and these days running 64-bit Windows 7/8). Mac OSX and Linux users (whose operating systems let you see both partitions at the same time) have a much easier time.
Speaking from past experience,   I would suggest that the success rate of people trying to install CHDK has vastly improved since STICK became available.    I not longer spend multiple posts trying to walk people through the process - I just point them to STICK and the problems all go away.  Thank you for that.
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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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Offline voxmagna

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #14 on: 06 / August / 2014, 07:34:00 »
OK I've got most of CHDK working now. Formatting in the camera doesn't change much. In fact when Stick does its re-partition, it reformats to 8K clusters on the FAT32 partition, smaller than the camera!

CHDK doesn't bother about card cluster sizes and you can make them what you like after running Stick. However, if you want to get pedantic about aligning the partition boundary, CHDK has problems (?), but then there are mixed thoughts on whether partition alignment has the same benefits for SD memory cards. 

SD cards don't work like hard drives, but usually small cluster sizes are fine for small files, but the partition table takes up a lot more (wasted) space holding cluster information in non-contiguous files. 15Mb RAW files are relatively large compared to 64Kb or 128Kb clusters.

I haven't got the in camera partition flip to work for me and when I thought about it, it didn't make sense. Lets say I'm on the road needing to read my photos in the FAT32 partition. Under Miscellaneous stuff I click on 'flip partition'. If it did work my boot files will not be seen and after switching off the camera CHDK will never reboot to flip back until I get home and Wasp the card. For the time being I am left with a FAT32 partition saving JPEGS and no RAW.  Am I misunderstanding this feature?
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #15 on: 06 / August / 2014, 07:57:28 »
Quote from: voxmagna on 06 / August / 2014, 07:34:00
I haven't got the in camera partition flip to work for me and when I thought about it, it didn't make sense. Lets say I'm on the road needing to read my photos in the FAT32 partition. Under Miscellaneous stuff I click on 'flip partition'. If it did work my boot files will not be seen and after switching off the camera CHDK will never reboot to flip back until I get home and Wasp the card. For the time being I am left with a FAT32 partition saving JPEGS and no RAW.  Am I misunderstanding this feature?
If there is a copy of the CHDK file PS.FI2 on the root of the large partition,  it will allow you to load CHDK via the firmware update method.  At that point you can navigate to the SD Card menu and swap the partitions back. 

I haven't checked if STICK puts the file there automatically but I will. If it doesn't I'll suggest it to zeno that he add that feature.

Note that very old cameras used a slightly different filename -  ps.fI or something like that.  The one in the CHDK distribution file that is downloaded will be the right one.
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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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Offline zeno

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #16 on: 06 / August / 2014, 10:17:51 »
Looking at the code:

1. STICK lets Windows choose the cluster size when formatting - the help for the format command says "Default settings are strongly recommended for general use" but I guess this is aimed at normal drives, not SD cards
2. STICK should copy everything to the big partition (but only DISKBOOT.BIN to the small one)

Dave
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Offline voxmagna

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #17 on: 06 / August / 2014, 12:27:53 »
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If there is a copy of the CHDK file PS.FI2 on the root of the large partition

Thanks, OK I can see the problem. Stick puts the CHDK folder on the large FAT32 partition and the boot files on the small FAT16. In that situation, the card won't reboot once the partition is switched to FAT32. But hang on, it won't reboot anyway if the boot files are on the FAT32 partition, because the camera has to see them on a FAT16 partition and that is not active right?

I think there is a conundrum trying to do a partition switch in the camera and if there are these issues should the routine be in the build? One could also extend this thinking to the 'make bootable' option. I said a feedback response in the camera that the card was actually bootable would give confidence. But if you were able to switch the active partition in camera, you can't make CHDK boot from the active FAT32 partition anyway can you?

I don't really want to make this thread too technical, but I am mentioning some things that others may fall into. The bottom line is if your card has the lock switch set and the camera reports 'Card Locked' then CHDK is not boot loading. Either the install is faulty or you switched partitions with Wasp to read the photo files,  then didn't switch the partition back again.
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Offline waterwingz

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Re: Help, New 16Gb card won't work with CHDK Canon A650 IS!
« Reply #18 on: 06 / August / 2014, 12:48:47 »
CHDK won't autoboot on older cameras from a FAT32 partition but it will load with the firmware update method from any partition type. Which is what I was trying to explain in my previous post. This works - I do it all the time on my three older cameras.  You really can do everything you need to do in the camera.

Update : if you have not seen this it might be of interest http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Prepare_your_SD_card
« Last Edit: 06 / August / 2014, 13:10:57 by waterwingz »
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Ported :   A1200    SD940   G10    Powershot N    G16
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