FNIRSI GC-01: Installation tricks

[PlasmaHH]

Hi there, before I resort to flashing it with a debugger ( btw. since the bundled flashtool scripts use openocd maybe you can add ftdi support? Many more people possibly have some kind of ftdi device than stlinks ) I wanted to see if I exhausted all possibilities on a "normal" install.

Sorry if this is somewhat lengthy, I just wanted to show all my process, since I think I almost got it (due to the "bricked" state it must have changed the firmware somehow) the missing piece might be smoewhere in here...

Context

I have a CH32F1 chip, ENH LCD.

It seems to me that the device is somehow trying to emulate a FAT16 partitiion and communicating back to us via the filename of an empty .txt file.

btw. does the LED red/green provide any useful status information?

Attempt 1

This documents the state more or less before/while writing this entry. During that time I tried something else whic possibly bricked the device completely (See Attempt 2)

State

Current state: device is "bricked" (NOAPP.TXT), bootloader acticve, so it seems at one point it was trying to install the firmware, which gives me hope that I need a tiny step.

Linux

This is my machine, all others are just borrowed from friends so it would be best if it worked here ;)

Plugging it in:

[642986.667705] [T25958] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 61 using xhci_hcd
[642986.809438] [T25958] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0483, idProduct=002a, bcdDevice= 2.00
[642986.809449] [T25958] usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[642986.809453] [T25958] usb 3-1: Product: AIR01
[642986.809455] [T25958] usb 3-1: Manufacturer: FNIRSI
[642986.809457] [T25958] usb 3-1: SerialNumber: Í«,4\¼U\xc2\x9c\x0fA
[642986.811984] [T25958] usb-storage 3-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[642986.812792] [T25958] scsi host0: usb-storage 3-1:1.0
[642987.839155] [T25230] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     AIR      DETECTION 1.0         PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[642987.840017] [T25230] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[642987.845029] [T25601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 51200 2048-byte logical blocks: (105 MB/100 MiB)
[642987.845367] [T25601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[642987.845373] [T25601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[642987.845544] [T25601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] No Caching mode page found
[642987.845547] [T25601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[642987.869320] [T25601] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk

fsck seems to find some oddities:

fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
FATs differ - using first FAT.
Cluster 0 out of range (255 > 12). Setting to EOF.
There is no label in boot sector, but there is volume label 'GC01 BOOT' stored in root directory
1) Copy volume label from root directory to boot sector
2) Remove volume label from root directory
[12?q]? 2
Reclaimed 1 unused cluster (8192 bytes).

*** Filesystem was changed ***
The changes have not yet been written, you can still choose to leave the
filesystem unmodified:
1) Write changes
2) Leave filesystem unchanged
[12?q]? 1
/dev/sda: 2 files, 0/11 clusters

this may or may not explain the problem of the other sytems to properly mount it.

After mounting it, there is a Readme.TXT ... when I then copy the firmware file radpro-fnirsi-gc01-ch32f103r8-2.0.1-install.bin to it, umount and mount again, it will show UNKNOWN.TXT as if it does not recognize the firmware file.

Do we know exactly what the bootloader is looking for? I know from some chinese devices that they sometimes look for special magic bytes, some signature or even an exact location on the FAT16 device by block ( and don't really understand the filesystem)

Win11

USB 2 Port.
It seems to detect something, asks me to fix/format it but then nothing else happens. Same AIR01 device as on Win10 shows up.

Win10

Only has USB3 capable ports.

An "AIR01" device appears in the "Devices and Printers" section of windows but no drive. diskmgmt.msc does not show any volume/device without assigned drive letter.

The dialogue of the AIR01 device at one point talks about it not working because a secondary device has an invalid hardware identification number, no idea what that one means.

Looking at the windows eventlog at one point I find a message "USBSTOR too many separators"

Android

Upon plugging the device in (USB C to C) android tells me that there is something wrong with teh device and it needs to be formatted which does not succeed

Attempt 2

While writing this entry another thing to try under linux came to my mind, which now seems to have left the device in a bricked state at first glance.

Linux

One thing came to my mind: when copying the file, it is not using the 8.3 naming convention. So I mounted the device as -tmsdos which prevents that to happen and renamed the file to something with .bin.

This seems to do something, but either I was too impatiend or that went wrong for other reasons, the device no seems bricked.

After that whenever I plug it in (irregardless of what buttons I have pressed ):

[644028.635635] [T26216] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 79 using xhci_hcd
[644028.758931] [T26216] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[644028.992202] [T26216] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[644029.222105] [T26216] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 80 using xhci_hcd
[644029.345545] [T26216] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[644029.578859] [T26216] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[644029.685838] [T26216] usb usb3-port1: attempt power cycle
[644030.092381] [T26216] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 81 using xhci_hcd
[644030.092645] [T26216] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[644030.299014] [T26216] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[644030.505541] [T26216] usb 3-1: device not accepting address 81, error -71
[644030.505703] [T26216] usb 3-1: WARN: invalid context state for evaluate context command.
[644030.628815] [T26216] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 82 using xhci_hcd
[644030.628972] [T26216] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[644030.835891] [T26216] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[644031.042147] [T26216] usb 3-1: device not accepting address 82, error -71
[644031.042301] [T26216] usb 3-1: WARN: invalid context state for evaluate context command.
[644031.042390] [T26216] usb usb3-port1: unable to enumerate USB device

Removing the battery seems to resolve this somehow. Plugging in the battery seems to start some code, causing the usb to not work anymore, so the only option left now is trying to get it to work without the battery possibly?

I would think that at this point there is some other code than the bootloader running which is unable to properly identify as a USB device.

I just now noticed that there is a reset button which seems to make this easier to not have to unplug the battery all the time...

Trying to install the original flash this way failed too.

So what I am really wondering:

• What is the real trigger in the bootloader to start copying the firmware file?
• What is is the requirement for the bootloader to recognize the data?
  • Does it need to be at an exact sector?
  • Does it need vfat extended names? or supports only 8.3 names?

At the moment I also sometimes get ERRAPP.TXT ... do we know the exact circumstances of these error filenames?

Win 10

Windows gives an error message that it failed to provide a hardware ID

[gc01noob]

here's a trick to make your life much easier:
forget Windows 11
use Linux
connect the device and power on
open the BOOTLOADER mounted drive
copy over the new firmware
(nothing will happen but leave the window open)
drag/copy over the same firmware file again
OK the overwrite
your device will now boot with the new firmware installed

don't ask me why but it just works :)

ps. you can use Windows for GeigerLog-RadPro if you like, it's fine with the COM hardware but ignores the USB mount.

[gc01noob]

btw
READY.TXT means all is well and it's ready to be upgraded
UNKNOWN.TXT means it hasn't recognised the file
APPERR.TXT means it's failed

[gc01noob]

i reported all of this a few days ago (mine has the APM MCU) but Gissio just closed the ticket and said to use the programmer.

correct resolution is: just copy it twice.

(USB2/3 etc makes no difference in Linux for mounting the BOOTLOADER)

RadPro 2.01 is excellent btw, well worth the upgrade and GeigerLog is great too.

[PlasmaHH]

Interesting though with copying it twice, I would assume that the fat16 emulation code is written so crappy that it tries to read the file on the first attempt before its completely finished.

In any case, this doesn't work for me either sadly. Maybe I ahve a different bootloader than you? You are saying "BOOOTLOADER mounted drive" which makes me think that this very string is mentioned somewhere, however mine shows up as "GC01 BOOT" so that might already be an indication?

Also I am not quite sure about the exact operations happening there when you use whatever graphical client you seem to be using to copy the files ( I use the command line, maybe there is a difference? )

Ok, while writing the above I had another idea and that was it finally! instead of doing the copy ( or the second one ) via cp, what I needed to do was cat radpro-fnirsi-gc01-ch32f103r8-2.0.1-install.bin > /mnt/whatever.bin and it did work!

This should definitely be written somewhere into the official documentation....

[dc1rdb]

Thanks for this great tip! The bootloader of my GC-01 was not accessible under Windows 7/10/11.
So I connected my GC-01 to a Raspberry Pi running Debian Buster and the bootloader drive showed up with READY.TXT.
After copying the 2.0.1 firmware file via drag and drop (had to do it twice, too), the GC-01 rebooted with the new firmware!

[gc01noob]

I used Gnome/Wayland on Ubuntu 22.04. It mounts to /media/username/BOOTLOADER

I think it does a cat as part of the drag/copy process to check what files exist and hence prompt for overwrite, if I remember correct normally a basic cp command just fails or requires a /f to force an overwrite if there's a name conflict

great news you got it working, weird bug but at least we have a workaround now. win-really-blows.....but RadPro is great