Desktop does not recognize Board, all common solutions attempted

[profezzorn]

@Nikonnate

Don’t know how to do your cool block quotes reply trick, so forgive me for just copy/pasting lol… Here goes!

higlight the text, then click the “quote” button that shows up when you do that.

@Nikonnate

“I don’t recommend using device manager, because it can be really hard to find the boards there. Use “Devices and Printers” instead.”

• When I do this, Proffieboard shows up on Devices/Printers just fine, with all correct drivers according to your video. However, Port is greyed out in Arduino and trying to upload ends in the 1-10 count in the compiler.

That’s weird. If the device drivers are correct, then it ought to show up in arduino. And it sounds like it does, but is grayed out? Maybe some other software on your computer is using it? Or maybe it’s a permission problem of some sort? Is your windows account an administrator account? (Although I’m not sure that actually matters or not…)

@Nikonnate

“So did you re-program the board?”

• I am only able to reprogram by forcing bootloader, but yes. However, the situation above still presents.

ok, so programming does work (if you use the buttons) that rules out a lot of issues, and lets us figure things out from there.

@Nikonnate

“Did you put in an SD card? Is it a freshly formatted SD card? What did you use to format it?”

• In the instances I am trying, all my SD cards are formatted as FAT32 through windows formatting utility. Card in vs out makes no difference. At least with this problem vs the other one we were discussing. I’ll break that off into a new thread eventually, don’t want to keep going back/forth between issues.

New thread sounds like a good idea.
I’m not sure if windows greates GPT or MBR partition tables nowadays, so it might be worth trying the SD association formatting tool, which I know does it correctly. (Using MBR, because Proffieboards do not support GPT, at least not yet.)

@Nikonnate

“When you re-programmed the board, what settings did you use?”

• What specifically do you mean in terms of settings? I force bootloader, ignore greyed out port and upload anyway, which does work. I feel like that might not answer your actual question though, so let me know if you need more info on that one.

Did you select Proffieboard V2 in arduino → tools?
What kind of USB type did you select in arduino → tools?

@Nikonnate

“What config file did you use?”

• I’ve been using the configs I wrote specifically for each saber in question respectively. Is there a different one I should try?

You might want to try default_proffieboard_config.h, just to rule out anything weird in your config file(s).

@Nikonnate

HOWEVER… I may have found my smoking gun…

The real trick is to flash them back to 5.x and see if it starts working again. That would be final proof that there is something different between 5.x and 6.x that is causing it. If that doesn’t work, then maybe you are making some other change when you are programming them that is cuasing the problem. (Like maybe not doing “eject safeily” on the SD card?)

There are quite a few differences betewen 5.x and 6.x, so if that turns out to be the key, it may still be a little tricky to find the problem. However, once we’ve established one configuration that works and one configuration that doesn’t, I should be able to try those configurations at home and see if I get the same results.

[Nikonnate]

@profezzorn

higlight the text, then click the “quote” button that shows up when you do that.

Cool trick! Thx

@profezzorn

What kind of USB type did you select in arduino → tools?

I didn’t touch that, never have. It’s currently on Serial both on 5.9 and 6.5… Does 6.5 require a different USB setting? Is that my issue???

@profezzorn

The real trick is to flash them back to 5.x and see if it starts working again. That would be final proof that there is something different between 5.x and 6.x that is causing it.

…

@profezzorn

You might want to try default_proffieboard_config.h , just to rule out anything weird in your config file(s).

Did that, and it is allowing me to flash from 5.9 back to 5.9. Tried the original config that was on this particular saber and it’s currently re-flashing just fine. Although strangely in both of those instances, STM Bootloader didn’t show up in Dev. Mgr. still, but you did say not to necessarily go by that.

HANG ON.

Now it’s re-flashing totally fine on 6.5… WHATTT… I’m literally typing this in real time as it is all happening… Let me go back and try the one I don’t want to tear down and see if I can get that one to flash…

BRO. IT’S WORKING.

I have absolutely zero idea what I did differently or changed or what happened here… Final test is gonna be to try one of those weird Tritium boards…

Tritium boards are still being goofy, but I will post that in another thread.

Looking back at everything I did here step by step… Does anything jump out at you as my solve? I’d hate to have put you through this and not have a definitive solution to be able to offer the community. Unbelievable!!!

[profezzorn]

Unfortunately, when the problem just seems to solve itself, it means that the problem could be anything. It could be something you did, something your computer did, bad cable, cosmic radiation or aliens, there is no way to know without further testing.

[Nikonnate]

Is there anything you’d recommend that I test to hopefully get you an answer? It’s gonna eat me alive haha

[profezzorn]

I would focus on the boards that are acting weird.
Most likely, if we can figure out what’s causing that, we’ll be one step closer to figure out what’s going on in general as well.

[Nikonnate]

Roger roger. I’m going to try one or two things and if it doesn’t work I’ll get a new thread going for you.

[Killshock52]

{referring to the sound} haha yeah mine has done that its your usb cord /data cable i just turned the sound off then when it uploaded it worked fine i managed to end the program but forgot how then it did it one more time.