Classic only appearing while bootloader active [WIN11]

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Machtri
 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2023 10:02 pm

Classic only appearing while bootloader active [WIN11]

Post by Machtri »

I've got 2 playground classics that were previously used in a university project and put aside by student because they "quit being flashable." Board behavior is almost identical between the two as far as I can tell.

When plugged in, power LED is steady ON. Neither board appears in device manager (on windows 11) until RESET is double-pressed and the bootloader activates. Windows "device connected" sound, and it appears in device manager. I'm able to select the right COM port in Arduino IDE and begin uploading. Consistently, however, the 10 seconds of the bootloader ends before the "blink" sketch can finish uploading(regardless of my timing with clicking "upload"), and the board disappears from device manager with no sign of the board's code being changed.

The one difference in board behavior between the two: when plugged in, one board immediately powers on neopix/LED #17 to a bright steady green, and the other only turns on #17 to a steady green after RESET is pressed at least once. Both boards are otherwise totally unresponsive other than being able to activate bootloader.

Google has been almost totally unhelpful after roughly 7 total hours of looking for troubleshooting options that weren't only for the Express or Bluefruit from what I could tell (circuitPY being 90% of troubleshooting focus even after explicitly excluding "-express" in search). I don't think my situation is unique, but Google returns the correct results ~10% of the time if I'm trying to figure out something mildly niche (salty, sorry).

I have a fully functional Arduino UNO that I can use as an ISP programmer, but I'm also not able to find any documentation on how to burn a bootloader - or even just flash - to a Playground Classic using an ISP programmer. ChatGPT seems to think that I can do it by connecting pins 10-13 on the UNO to the Playground's RESET, MOSI, MISO, and SCK(or A3) pins respectively. Seeing as my Playground boards don't have any pins labeled MOSI, MISO, or SCK(or A3), in addition to the only pinouts I can find being of the EXPRESS (which have different pin designations as far as I can tell), I won't be following that advice.

I can also connect a linux VM to the COM port, but before I try trouble shooting with a whole different OS, I wanted to know if I could get useful help here...

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: Classic only appearing while bootloader active [WIN11]

Post by mikeysklar »

Are you using 1.x or 2.x or the Arduino IDE?

While this board should work with both it is possible that the reset to bootloader mode timing is more difficult to time in the 2.x release.

Do you have verbose compile and upload enabled in File-->Preferences to help confirm when you do have a successful upload.

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Machtri
 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2023 10:02 pm

Re: Classic only appearing while bootloader active [WIN11]

Post by Machtri »

mikeysklar wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 6:40 pm Are you using 1.x or 2.x or the Arduino IDE?

While this board should work with both it is possible that the reset to bootloader mode timing is more difficult to time in the 2.x release.

Do you have verbose compile and upload enabled in File-->Preferences to help confirm when you do have a successful upload.
You are fantastic! Turned on verbose for compile and upload, and switched to the 1.8.19 release. I was able to begin uploading the Blink sketch and activate the bootloader while the IDE continuously retried the upload. Both boards now work and are recognized without needing the bootloader to be activated. Thank you so much!

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: Classic only appearing while bootloader active [WIN11]

Post by mikeysklar »

Cool, thank you for the followup that reverting back to Ardiuno IDE 1.x resolved the issue with this classic 32u4 base boards. It is older hardware so it makes sense that the earlier IDE might have slightly better support for it.

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