A650IS - must be doing something wrong - page 2 - General Help and Assistance on using CHDK stable releases

Kyle

8

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #10 on: 21 / March / 2008, 04:22:53 »

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Ahh, not sure how I missed that colon. Well I was able to go through the rest of those steps, however the update firmware option still does not appear on my menu. Is there a way to confirm that my card is indeed bootable?
it didn't seem like anything happened.

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jetzt

316
[A710IS,(SD200)]

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #11 on: 21 / March / 2008, 09:35:21 »

Confirming that card is boot able:
method:
1) Open in Hex-Editor, is there really BOOTDISK?
2) Put SD in Card-Reader, shudown -s -f -t 01 (or manual shutdown), in bios: make sure pc boots from usb, pc should hang on strartup[discovered that by accident,

]

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BB

164

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #12 on: 21 / March / 2008, 11:03:58 »

Kyle,

Some suggestions/questions:

1. Is card 2GB or smaller? Or is it 4GB or larger?
2. If the card is 4GB or larger, use the "format i: /fs:fat" (without """) in the CMD window.
3. Do the "Bootable i:" using a SD adapter--It may not work correctly if trying to use the USB/Camera.
4. Did you get the "Command Window" to stay open for you?
5. To run "Bootable i:" in the command window, the program "bootable.exe" needs either to be in the i:\bootable.exe location (copy it to your SD card) or you need to run the program from a known location like "c:\bootable i:"
6. Once you have the card "bootable" and copied DISKBOOT.BIN to i:\DISKBOOT.BIN (root or "top" directory on your SD card), make sure you flip the SD Card's write protect switch to "write protect".
7. Put SD Card in your camera. If you turn the camera on, you will either see a little blue splash screen for a couple seconds (yea!) or:

a. Camera hangs--probably wrong or corrupted CHDK diskboot.bin program.
b. If you see "warning, card is write protected", then your card is probably not bootable.
c. Or, if you see the "write protected error" when the camera is turned on (and your card is larger than 2GBytes), your card may not be correctly formated with "format i: /fs:fat).

8. The "Dry OS" cameras (A650, A720) do not support the firmware upgrade menu option (boot in "play mode" scroll to firmware update)...

And lastly, a big warning. Make sure you have the correct drive letter (i: or whatever) when you do the "format" and possibly the "bootable", commands--you will most likely wipe out your hard drive if you use the wrong drive letter or cause other problems with other storage devices.

-Bill

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Kyle

8

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #13 on: 21 / March / 2008, 14:02:19 »

1. Is card 2GB or smaller? Or is it 4GB or larger?

its a 2 GB.

3. Do the "Bootable i:" using a SD adapter--It may not work correctly if trying to use the USB/Camera.

I don't own one, so I'd like to avoid that if possible.

4. Did you get the "Command Window" to stay open for you?

well here's the thing, when I double click the Bootable.exe, the window does that open for a millisecond thing. its only when I drag the exe to a new cmd window that I can actually get it to ask for that confirmation. could this be where the problem lies?

I do keep the exe on the root of the I card so that shouldn't be a problem.

6. Once you have the card "bootable" and copied DISKBOOT.BIN to i:\DISKBOOT.BIN (root or "top" directory on your SD card), make sure you flip the SD Card's write protect switch to "write protect".

this is something I kind of skipped because whenever I switch to write protect with this card, my camera wont even power on. it acts as if its not getting any power. I thought it was the batteries at first, but I took out the card and it powers on again. and sure enough switching the lock back makes it power on fine as well.
I just now tested it with the card it came with, and it actually does power on when locked. so yeah, that's pretty odd...

Edit: okay, I just tested it and it does power on when locked when the CHDK files have been removed. does this mean some of them are corrupted?

« Last Edit: 21 / March / 2008, 14:20:16 by Kyle »

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GrAnd

916
[A610, S3IS]

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #14 on: 21 / March / 2008, 16:38:15 »

Have you checked your firmware version? Is it 1.00d?

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CHDK Developer.

Kyle

8

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #15 on: 21 / March / 2008, 16:56:13 »

its GM1. 00D yeah.

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BB

164

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #16 on: 21 / March / 2008, 20:27:15 »

Quote from: Kyle on 21 / March / 2008, 14:02:19

1. Is card 2GB or smaller? Or is it 4GB or larger?

its a 2 GB.

2GB should be fine...

3. Do the "Bootable i:" using a SD adapter--It may not work correctly if trying to use the USB/Camera.

I don't own one, so I'd like to avoid that if possible.

You probably will need to get one. There have been some reports that when the camera is used via USB, RAW files and others may not transfer/be seen by the file browser. The Adapters are only $15 or even come free with and SD card. Also, if you are going to use 4GB cards and the "format i: /fs:fat" command--required for the A650 and A720 cards to boot CHDK--you will need the SDHC card USB adapter.

4. Did you get the "Command Window" to stay open for you?

well here's the thing, when I double click the Bootable.exe, the window does that open for a millisecond thing. its only when I drag the exe to a new cmd window that I can actually get it to ask for that confirmation. could this be where the problem lies?

For Windows XP (and should be true of all modern version of windows, click on <START> then <RUN> and type "cmd" or "command" then <ENTER>. You should get a "DOS Window". Remember that the bootable.exe program needs to be in the same directory that you have your DOS window pointed at... For example:

C:
cd \camera (where you placed bootable.exe program)

or

I:
cd \ (if you placed bootable.exe on your SD card)

I do keep the exe on the root of the I card so that shouldn't be a problem.

6. Once you have the card "bootable" and copied DISKBOOT.BIN to i:\DISKBOOT.BIN (root or "top" directory on your SD card), make sure you flip the SD Card's write protect switch to "write protect".

this is something I kind of skipped because whenever I switch to write protect with this card, my camera wont even power on. it acts as if its not getting any power. I thought it was the batteries at first, but I took out the card and it powers on again. and sure enough switching the lock back makes it power on fine as well.
I just now tested it with the card it came with, and it actually does power on when locked. so yeah, that's pretty odd...

Edit: okay, I just tested it and it does power on when locked when the CHDK files have been removed. does this mean some of them are corrupted?

Hmmm... I don't know that "bootable.exe i:" will work when using USB/Camera to format and write the "Boot" flag to a sector on the SD card. From what I have read, the SD/SDHC adapters all work fine.

And, yes, you must have the Write Protect switch set to "ON or Write Protected"... If you have the write protect switch on, the camera should give a warning (if the card is not bootable).

-Bill

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Kyle

8

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #17 on: 21 / March / 2008, 21:47:40 »

You probably will need to get one. There have been some reports that when the camera is used via USB, RAW files and others may not transfer/be seen by the file browser. The Adapters are only $15 or even come free with and SD card.

don't adapters use usb too though? just to be clear I'm using a usb card reader, not the camera itself to transfer files. I don't understand how an adapter would change anything for a 2 gig card, doesn't the pc access the card the same way? it seems to me an adapter is the same as a reader, just with less card ports. unless your talking about an internal adapter? its not a HC card, so whats it even adapting?

if I need to get one of these adapters to access raw files later that's what I'll do. but for now I'd just like to run the CHDK if possible.

or Windows XP (and should be true of all modern version of windows, click on <START> then <RUN> and type "cmd" or "command" then <ENTER>. You should get a "DOS Window". Remember that the bootable.exe program needs to be in the same directory that you have your DOS window pointed at... For example:

C:
cd \camera (where you placed bootable.exe program)

or

I:
cd \ (if you placed bootable.exe on your SD card)

like I said, the CMD works fine when I open one up via run and run bootable.exe. Im able to switch to the "I" and confirm with Y to make it bootable. its only when I use the bootable.exe itself by double clicking that it doesn't stay on screen.
I have bootable.exe on "I", the same drive I point the cmd to.

and I'm still unsure as to why the camera wont even boot up when I put the lock on (after placing the new files onto it)

« Last Edit: 21 / March / 2008, 21:50:00 by Kyle »

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BB

164

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #18 on: 21 / March / 2008, 23:27:30 »

Kyle,

If you are using a USB to SD card reader--you are probably just fine (I guess some of the very early version readers can also have issues).

You are using "bootable I:" (":" colon--not just "I")?

When you just "click" on the bootable program, Windows just opens a DOS command window, runs the program "bootable.exe" (without the "I:"), and when the program is done, the window just closes... That is all normal (but useless without the "I:" added).

If you want to just click on the "bootable" program without going through the command window--you can create a DOS Batch files (originally from pre-windows days)...

Use a text editor like Notepad to open a new file all boot-camera-I.bat (or whatever name you like). In that file, type in the following several lines:

echo on (so you can see what is happening on your screen)
bootable i: (the program hard coded to always do drive "I:"
pause (pause so you can see the results--make sure you hit <ENTER> at the end of this line)

And that is it...

You add more functions by doing things like (in this case, make the card bootable and copy the DISKBOOT.BIN program to your card:

echo on
dir i:
echo Check if card is present on computer. Press ^C to stop batch file
pause
bootable i:
copy c:\camera\DISKBOOT.BIN i:\
dir i:\
pause

Regarding as to why you are having problems running CHDK. I am probably going to type too much here--but since we can talk face to face, I want to make sure that there are no miss-understandings or assumptions that may be confusing us---

0. Pull the SD card from the camera and make sure that it is NOT WRITE PROTECTED.

1. have you checked your camera's firmware version? I have only heard of one version, but if yours is different (newer/older) than the version you have downloaded, it will hang the camera.

FAQ - CHDK Wiki

2. Try formating your SD card directly with the "format I: /fs:fat"--This will force the FAT16 needed for the autoboot process to work (2GB cards should default to FAT16--but it won't hurt to make sure everything is correct

3. You are typing "bootable i:" or bootable I:" with the ":" right? In one line? No other variations like "bootable <i>" or "bootable <I:>"--?

4. After you have formated and made the card "bootable" (format first, then bootable). You need to get your CHDK software that matches your camera model and firmware version number... I have used this link to get the current "AllBest" code for my A720IS (also a Dry OS camera like the A650IS):

Index of /chdk/

The A650IS supported file is:

allbest-a650-100d-37.zip

And you have used some version of "ZIP" to open up the compressed archive file and found the program:

DISKBOOT.BIN
PS.FIR

The only file you need is the DISKBOOT.BIN (PS.FIR does not work with "DryOS" and should not be in this release).

Copy the DISKBOOT.BIN from the ZIP file to i:\DISKBOOT.BIN (capitalization probably should not matter--but I preserve it just in case...).

And, for a start... That should be it. One file is all that is needed to start CHDK.

Pull the card from your reader, flip the write protect switch on. Place back in the camera and in either "Play" or "Shoot" mode, turn the camera on. You should see a small blue splash screen saying that CHDK is loaded.

If it crashes, I probably would need more information from you... You are using Windows XP? You are not renaming files, are you pulling the DISKBOOT.BIN from my posted link or another? You do have a A650IS with firmware version 1.00d? When you got the firmware version, your file name was "ver.req" (VER.REQ) and not "ver.reg" (VER.REG) or some other easy to make typo?

All I can think of for the moment...

Sincerely,
-Bill

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Kyle

8

Re: A650IS - must be doing something wrong

« Reply #19 on: 22 / March / 2008, 04:19:41 »

Whoah, I finally got it working. I wish I knew what exactly was the problem, but all I know is I reformatted (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it was already formatted in fat16 judging by what Ive seen in the hex editor) made and ran a bootable bat file, as well as used the same method I was before.

but I don't remember too many more specifics. there was one thing I did at the end that did the trick, because the first time I was able to boot up the cam with the card locked for once, but it wasnt actually giving that blue boot up screen. then I did something else and it worked on the next attempt.

anyway, bottom line is it works. thanks Bill and the rest of you. I really appreciate all the help.

Now I'm pretty overwhelmed/confused by all the new options. but that's a feat for another day.
Ive been messing around with stuff for about 10 mins, and my card came out pretty hot. I hope that's normal...

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