- Fri Nov 13, 2015 3:56 pm
#33895
I can see what you're saying martin, (and thanks for responding) it's hard to tell the origin of these things or what is in them except the for output stating 8mb (512+512) I'm not sure what that means. But I did read somewhere that a 32mb would = 4MB (32/8 bits) maybe that was even one of yours
. Being able to see flash id might help if/when I learn what to do with that piece of information 
I've spent most of my time with these things just trying to get them to work. All I know at this time is that the one I tried to flash is pretty much a brick....Yet....It still will answer ESporer when a connection is opened to it. There is just nothing there to see, and no firmware (IE:bootloader). So I don't think I could use The arduino IDE to upload anything to gain any info as.viking suggested....or am I wrong on that?
Update:
I've tried uploading using arduino IDE but nothing would upload. martin, I your approach looks like it might help, but to be honest it seems to be above my head at this time. I don't know where to begin with it. I read somewhere that there is a Windows .exe available, but haven't pursued it yet. As stubborn as I am, I'm starting to think I'm beating a dead horse. Why? I would like to comment on the "fake" issue bit more. When I say "fake" it's not exactly from a technical spec perspective, but more from one of "product as advertised". I mentioned that I'd purchased a couple flash drives that were "fake" . These were advertised at a high capacity, and I figured I could use them to add mobility to all the arduino related files I had. What I found after trying to use them is that the makers, "faked" the capacity, which was reported to Windows as the advertised capacity, but really only had a fraction of that. (after the fact I found by googling there were many others taken in similarly) What happened was that while writing to the drive, the addressing wrapped around to the beginning and overwrote what was already written. After a couple writes, the thing became completely useless in that it was not even recognized on the usb port. So what I'm questioning is could there be a similar situation involving the flash memory on these modules. I somehow got it to flash once, and when I I tried a second time, it didn't go. I wish I had more knowledge to pursue this to the end but I have neither that nor the test equipment to do it. I miss the old days when one could test discrete circuits with logic probes, etc. (sigh) Thanks all, for your help and patience!
martinayotte wrote:Using esptool.py from https://github.com/themadinventor/esptool allows also to get flash_id without uploading any firmware.
Be aware that most ESP-12E have 4MB (32Mbits), some still have 512KB (4Mbits), "fake" or "not fake", that's depends of manufacturer's batches.
I can see what you're saying martin, (and thanks for responding) it's hard to tell the origin of these things or what is in them except the for output stating 8mb (512+512) I'm not sure what that means. But I did read somewhere that a 32mb would = 4MB (32/8 bits) maybe that was even one of yours
. Being able to see flash id might help if/when I learn what to do with that piece of information I've spent most of my time with these things just trying to get them to work. All I know at this time is that the one I tried to flash is pretty much a brick....Yet....It still will answer ESporer when a connection is opened to it. There is just nothing there to see, and no firmware (IE:bootloader). So I don't think I could use The arduino IDE to upload anything to gain any info as.viking suggested....or am I wrong on that?Update:
I've tried uploading using arduino IDE but nothing would upload. martin, I your approach looks like it might help, but to be honest it seems to be above my head at this time. I don't know where to begin with it. I read somewhere that there is a Windows .exe available, but haven't pursued it yet. As stubborn as I am, I'm starting to think I'm beating a dead horse. Why? I would like to comment on the "fake" issue bit more. When I say "fake" it's not exactly from a technical spec perspective, but more from one of "product as advertised". I mentioned that I'd purchased a couple flash drives that were "fake" . These were advertised at a high capacity, and I figured I could use them to add mobility to all the arduino related files I had. What I found after trying to use them is that the makers, "faked" the capacity, which was reported to Windows as the advertised capacity, but really only had a fraction of that. (after the fact I found by googling there were many others taken in similarly) What happened was that while writing to the drive, the addressing wrapped around to the beginning and overwrote what was already written. After a couple writes, the thing became completely useless in that it was not even recognized on the usb port. So what I'm questioning is could there be a similar situation involving the flash memory on these modules. I somehow got it to flash once, and when I I tried a second time, it didn't go. I wish I had more knowledge to pursue this to the end but I have neither that nor the test equipment to do it. I miss the old days when one could test discrete circuits with logic probes, etc. (sigh) Thanks all, for your help and patience!
Last edited by flagtrax on Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
