newbie vs AMLogic Burn Card Maker

[Hugh R]

I got my first box, a T95K Pro (s912 processor). It came with old firmware. When I asked, the vendor gave me a .zip file with new firmware. But no hints on how to install it.

After much googling, I decided to update the firmware via an SD card. I tried creating the card on Linux using hints from CNX-Software. That didn't work (for some reason that I have not figured out).

I decided to try the AMLogic Burn Card Maker. I had great trouble finding it. I got 2.0.3 from a confusing thread in this forum. The thread points to another, but the important post in the second thread has been deleted. I'd post to those threads but they are locked.

When I try burn_card_maker_v2.0.3, run as administrator, it cannot even format the card. It says "L(1479)fail to disk partition!". Any idea what's going on? Google hasn't seen this message.

[Hugh R]

Follow up. I switched from a 32GB ADATA MicroSD card to an 8GB Kingston MicroSD card. After the first attempt (with th 32GB card) my T95K pro would no longer boot to Android. I was worried that I'd seriously bricked the T95K. But when I repeated the procedure with the 8GB card, the update proceeded as it should. All is well.

I have no idea why the 32G card did not work. I did write the card with an old netbook (Acer Aspire One 522) and maybe it could not handle 32G cards. Maybe the card itself is bad. Can anyone recommend a good SD card testing program?

[trebor]

I flash a few Media players and Burn Card Maker can be as you have found a Pain...

USB burning tool with a A: to A: is the the best, in saying that it can also be a pain, drivers , USB port age of PC, drivers etc

SD Formatter

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

may help, Cards can be a Pain

[Hugh R]

Thanks, tЯ϶doЯ

I formatted the 32GB with the Win10 formatter, asking for FAT32. Here's what Linux fdisk said about it:
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdd1 1948285285 3650263507 1701978223 811.6G 6e unknown
/dev/sdd2 0 0 0 0B 74 unknown
/dev/sdd4 28049408 28049848 441 220.5K 0 Empty

fdisk says this about the 8GB formatted by the card burner:

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdd1 * 32130 15117164 15085035 7.2G c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

These are suspiciously different. I have no idea what ID 6e is, for example

[xanadu89897]

Use a Windows machine and install an utility called the Rufus USB Formatter Tool. Format the card as FAT32, leaving cluster as default. Untick the bootable disk and extended label options.
Select Quick format and set to at least 2 wipes.

32GB SD card is overkill. Don't you have a smaller capacity SD card preferably 4GB-8GB?

Once formatted proceed to use the Card Maker Tool immediately to generate your intended ROM image. Do not use Card Maker tool to format your card. Create the boot card immediately with your already formatted FAT32 card.

[xanadu89897]

Also does your SD card have more than 1 partition? If so, you need to make sure it has only a single partition with FAT32 format for it to work correctly with the Amlogic Card Maker.

[Emulate]

For anyone else having the same problem, I had this too.

I am using a class 4 sd card and window format didn't seem to work with sd burn so I used rufus to format, this didn't seem to work, then I used sd formatter as mentioned above, this seemed to make the card dissapear from windows browser, however the formatter programs could still see the sd card and still format so I then went back to rufus and tried again, this seemed to work as the sd burn program now worked successfully.

Somehow a mix of the two programs seemed to work to format the card eventually.