Breakthrough on getting getting duet to talk to laptop and read SD card

I have seen a lot of posts about problems getting the duet to talk to laptops and thought I would share something I found that solved the problem for me. Although the laptop could see the duet, It couldn't read the SD card and the USB connection was very hit and miss. I assumed I had dodgy board. However I managed to source through a colleague a second duet board (a much older one that came with one of the first RS printers) - it worked fine, so I triumphantly updated the firmware to the latest version as per commissioning instructions, only to find that it promptly now did exactly the same thing as my original board The only thing they had in common was the SD card, which was working fine before I updated the firmware. I dug out another, better SD card that I had laying around, formatted it, added the relevant files and voila - all sprang to life on both boards! My conclusion...that the supplied SD card worked on the very original firmware, but failed to be good enough for the later version I installed, so maybe worth a try if you are experiencing something similar

Well spotted MrCrispi - quite a few people fell foul of SD card problems early on (but I guess those threads are buried now). Ian, maybe you should add "throw out the supplied SD card and buy a new one" to commissioning instructions (unless you've sourced another type that works now) - it seems to be a very common source of problems...

Ray

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2014 09:56AM by rayhicks.

Yes, we have sourced new ones now. The old ones are being consigned, gleefully by me, to the fire!

Ian
RepRapPro tech support