feather m4 express not mounting as CIRCUITPY drive

[arcsecond]

I have a couple of Feather m4 Express boards (Board-ID: SAMD51J19A-FeatherM4-v0). I soldered headers on. One of them works fine, no issues, updated and ran code. The other one won't mount the CIRCUITPY drive but will mount the FEATHERBOOT drive if I double click the reset button.

I've followed the instructions to update the bootloader to v3.13.0 (file: update-bootloader-feather_m4-v3.13.0.uf2) and confirmed that in the INFO_UF2.TXT file.
I've also updated circuitpython to 7.0.0 (file: adafruit-circuitpython-feather_m4_express_en_US-7.0.0.uf2)

On initial plugin I get a rapidly blinking little yellow light but no CIRCUITPY drive.
When I reset to FEATHERBOOT I get a the same rapidly blinking little yellow light, a breathing red light on the other side of the USB port, and the NeoPixel is briefly red and then steady green.

My computer is running Ubuntu 21.10. I've used the same USB cable for both the known good working board and the problematic one.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
-James P

[mikeysklar]

Are you running anything else on your Ubuntu system like the Thonny IDE? I have seen reports of that blocking the CIRCUITPY drive mount.

What happens after you drop the CircuitPython-7.0 image onto the M4 when in bootloader mode? Do you have another system you can try with (MacOS / Windows / different Linux release PiOS, etc).

[arcsecond]

It's actually a really fresh Ubuntu install. I installed mu-editor and chromium and that's about it.

After dropping the CircutiPython-7.0.0 uf2 file on it restarts and I get the rapidly blinking yellow light and no CIRCUITPY drive still. I'm assuming it updated but have no way to actually tell.

I have tried mounting to my work Windows (10 Enterprise) laptop with the same results.

Thanks.
-James P

[mikeysklar]

Thanks. You are making good observations and testing choices.

The yellow LED means that CircuitPython is in safe mode. There might be a reason for this on the REPL console. Are you seeing new raw devices show up in /dev when you insert hookup the Feather M4 Express board? I understand that it is not successfully mounting the CIRCUITPY as a filesystem, but it does sound as though the board is being recognized by your system.

Can you post a picture of your soldering on the Feather M4 Express. Has there been anything else connected to it?

[arcsecond]

Nothing extra shows up in /dev when plugged in.

Oh geez pics of my soldering, uh... my soldering might be a bit uneven but i think it's serviceable.

[mikeysklar]

Okay, soldering looks great. Thank you for the quality photos.

This sounds like something is going awry with the CircuitPython upgrade.

Can you use the Windows machine to boot your Feather M4 into bootloader mode so you see the FEATHERBOOT and then drop the CircuitPython-7.10-beta.3 image on the device? I want you to try a different image and a different machine (not the Ubuntu one) so we can rule those out.

https://downloads.circuitpython.org/bin ... beta.3.uf2

[3rdbyrd]

I'm having some issues that may be related. I was trying to update the bootloader on my M4 Express, and had no problems with circuitpy or featherboot until I loaded 3.13 and now I can't get back to circuitpy. I used the REPL technique to erase all the files in CIRCUITPY then installed a fresh set of Circuitpy files, THEN I tried to update the UF2 from 3.1 to 3.9. I was confused because it is reported as 3.13. I don't have a clue about that, would like a brief explanation of what that's all about. Might help later.

[arcsecond]

> Can you use the Windows machine to boot your Feather M4 into bootloader mode so you see the FEATHERBOOT and then drop the CircuitPython-7.10-beta.3 image on the device? I want you to try a different image and a different machine (not the Ubuntu one) so we can rule those out.

Sorry for the delay, holidays and such.

Different image and different machine appears to make no difference.

Thanks for all your help.
-James

[danhalbert]

@3rdbyrd Please start a new thread.