espressif: CIRCUITPY drive missing in 10.0.0-alpha.6

[Sola85]

CircuitPython version and board name

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Zero 10.0.0-alpha.6 with Windows 11

Code/REPL

Doesn't matter

Behavior

After erasing flash and flashing 10.0.0-alpha.6, no CIRCUITPY drive appears after plugging in.
main.py seems to run, but I can't interact with the board via usb serial.
I see the same behaviour on main at 0028818.

Flashing 9.2.8 again and everything works again.

Description

No response

Additional information

No response

[Sola85]

Update: The CIRCUITPY drive did eventually appear, but only after around 3-4 minutes of being plugged in. After this time I was also able to interact with the board via usb serial again. After unplugging the board, it again takes this large amout of time until the drive is available.

[dhalbert]

If you have some other computers, could you try it on those? macOS or Linux (could be an RPi) would be especially interesting. Also if you have another board (especially an Adafruit one) that exhibits the problem, that would be interesting.

[Sola85]

I don't have much that I can test at the moment but here is a summary of the combinations what I can test:

• Waveshare ESP32S3-Zero Windows: No/Very late CIRCUITPY drive
• Waveshare ESP32S3-Zero Ubuntu: Works as expected
• Generic ESP32-S3-MINI-1 module Windows: Works as expected

So all boards and combinations work with 9.2.8, and with 10.0.0-alpha.6 only the Waveshare board doesn't work with Windows.

[dhalbert]

If there is no or a trivial code.py or main.py, does it make any difference? Also try with no settings.toml or an empty one.

Are you using the .bin, or the .uf2 with the TinyUF2 bootloader?

[Sola85]

Hadn't realized this before, but when the CIRCUITPY drive does show up after a few minutes in the problematic configuration, it is read-only.

I tried removing code.py, main.py and settings.toml and also tried replacing them with empty files (settings.toml was empty all along), but this doesn't change anything. These changes to the files were only possible on linux, due to the above problem.

I also tried a second Windows 11 machine, but this behaves the same as the first: No/Very late Circuitpy drive on 10.0.0-alpha.6 and working circuitpy drive on 9.2.8.

[Sola85]

Are you using the .bin, or the .uf2 with the TinyUF2 bootloader?

Flashing the .bin with esptool.