This is a troubleshoot tale of flashing the Tiny 2350 and probably other 2350-based boards. The bottom line is you need to use USB 3 from a reliable source of signal and power. I will explain the journey and I believe sharing this info will help people.
Ordered two Tiny 2350’s and two Pico 2’s and received them this week. US vendors don’t have any immediately shipping RP2350 boards yet. Ordered a Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 today.
Basically the debugging journey started when I was unable to flash MicroPython the Tiny 2350 from either an M1 Mac or a Raspberry Pi 4. When I tried to get into boot/flashing mode, it would connect and then disconnect quickly, rarely even popping up as a connected device. The MicroPython builds are hot off the beta presses so I wondered if somehow the .uf2 files were unstable. But the problem was much simpler than that.
At some point I realized the problem was probably the choice of USB port I used on either the Mac M1 systems or the Raspberry Pi 4. Both Macs had many year old USB hubs that only support USB 2 and are not externally powered. When I went straight from one of the USB C 3/Thunderbold ports, the flashing process was stable and consistent. Sure enough, going back to the Pi 4 and using one of the two USB 3 ports also made things right.
I looked around all sorts of flashing documentation for the RP2350 devices and their specific MicroPython. I also review how to get into the right boot mode. I don’t recall seeing USB 3 mentioned.
I have all four boards delivered in a week from UK to USA even before any US-based maker I checked were shipping anything with an RP2350 in it. I was so pleased with the availability and features I just ordered a Pimoroni Pico Plus 2.
I want to share this troubleshooting advice. Perhaps it should be added to the documentation on flashing. Very good instructions but i don’t recall USB 3 being stated as a requirement. From my experience, USB 3 with good power is required. As always, avoid hubs when things go wrong. Thank you for the cool Tinys. I’ve programming with them last 4 hours and they are cool. I bought the Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 because I might quickly run out of headroom on the mighty Tiny. I strongly recommend buying RP2350 stuff from Pimoroni because they can ship immediately. It seems they may be months ahead of other makers.
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