Gameduino 3 faulty or SDCard issue?

[purezx]

Hello all, got the Gameduino yesterday and this is my first post.

I have run through a few of the examples and quite a few will not run or display the COPROCESSOR ERROR screen. Here's a list of the examples I've tested so far:

GRAPHICS
=======
Logo  - OK
Mono - OK
Reflection - OK
Slotgag - NOT WORKING
Tiled - NOT WORKING
Walk - OK

PERIPHERALS
=========
Noisy - OK
Sketch - OK
Song - NOT WORKING (PATCHY, INTERMITTENT NOISES)
Tilt - NOT SURE, DRAWS A LINE OFF THE SCREEN FROM THE CERTRE WHICH SOMETIMES CHANGES POSITION, BUT NOT OFTEN.

DEMOS
=====
Cobra - NOT WORKING
Jnr - Have a screen image but I thought it was meant to scroll?
Kenny - OK
Sprites - OK
Widgets - OK

GAMES
=====
Chess - OK
Frogger - OK
Nightstrike - NOT WORKING, COPRO ERROR

Any ideas? Is Gameduino fussy about SDCARD capacity, make or format?

I have also tried the 'Viewer' program, the first image and Sunrise load OK but there's a Copro Error for the 'Selfie' image.

[jamesbowman]

It sounds like a SD card issue. All SD cards are different. Some follow the SD specs closely, but some don't. In particular Gameduino 2/3 need the SD card to properly implement SPI mode.

This SanDisk micro SD (Amazon) works well.

There's a list of which samples can run without an SD card here:

excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino2/faq.htm

From your list it sounds like the card is working intermittently.

A couple of other notes:

Jnr - the scroll bar is the checkered band across the bottom of the screen
Tilt - this demo is Gameduino 2 only. I have opened an issue to fix this.

[purezx]

Thank you for the quick response, much appreciated.

I suspected the SDCARD as it seems to be the common denominator here, although it works OK with other Arduino projects.

2GB microSD cards, formatted as FAT16 OK?

Jnr - Yes, the chequered band is across the bottom of the screen.
Tilt - Ok, thanks for letting me know.

[electra]

Now this is an interesting thread.. My GD3(Both 3.5" and 7") seem to be behaving the same.
A SD card works for a few hours.. Then starts to cause problems.. Removing the card makes all demos and code that don't use the card work fine again.
A new card works for a few hours(Or a day or two) then dies in the same way.
But they read fine in a reader in another machine.

Spent quite a few hours re-doing solder joins thinking I'd flexed and cracked something and checking level converters for ESD damage, only to remove the card and have it all come good.

[jamesbowman]

Just saw this. Sorry. electra - to be clear, are the cards permanently "bad" after this, or do they recover after remove/insert?