you're not alone, coloreddust.IMHO we have buggy/crippled USB (?) storage driver that starts with all sorts of warnings of "Damaged SD card", "Blank SD card", etc., at every boot. Which means if you try to upgrade from the ROM at this card, you may fail 3 times out of four. Like I did.All my cards were formatted in the PDN, it doesn't really matter.What matters is try to find an old card of 512, better 256, or even better 128 MB. Another trick I've read about is partition your 1 GB or more card with FAT32 of 128 MB size and the rest of whatever unreadable by PDN at your level of upgrade (meaning: you haven't partitioned your internal card to FAT32 plus ext2 yet)I believe geebekazoo suggested another trick: hold "Back" and "ON/OFF" much longer, wait maybe 20 seconds, or even more, so the FW burning bar starts -- at last. The theory behind it is a normal SD reading utility starts a tidbit later after the boot, so just wait for it to kick in.We need a firmware burning PC utility before these silly flimsy buttons will wear down and out completely.