Failure to mount SPI SD-card on ESP32-S3

[JuhaS2]

I am unable to get a SD card mounted on ESP32-S3. Is there still some unsolved issue with SPI SD cards on ESP32-S3? Or have I just not understood what are the correct parameters required by the machine.SDCard(...).

Our hardware details are:

• Microcontroller: UnexpectedMaker FeatherS3 with ESP32-S3 (https://esp32s3.com/feathers3.html)
• SD-card reader: Adalogger FeatherWing (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2922).
• The FeatherS3 and the FeatherWing are stacked on top of each other (as designed) and all pins of the ESP32 are soldered to the Featherwing, including the SPI pins. This same physical connection worked earlier with CircuitPython.
• SD card: Sandisk Ultra 16GB formatted with FAT32. (Worked in CircuitPython)
• The micropython (v1.19.1-645-g451ded8d7) with ulab is compiled ourselves using instructions found in https://github.com/v923z/micropython-ulab#esp32-based-boards. However, I am pretty sure the problem was present already earlier when we were running stock micropython.

This should be the very basic way to connect the SD card over SPI. If I have understood correctly, according to https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/library/machine.SDCard.html, the basic commands to mount the SD should be:

import machine
import os
# Connect to the SD card over the SPI
sd = machine.SDCard(slot=SLOTNUM)
# Mount SD to the file system
os.mount(sd, "/sd")
# Show files present on the SD 
print(str(os.listdir('/sd')))

The machine.SDCard instructions about ESP32 tell that "slots 2 and 3 use the SPI ports", but I have tried all slots [0,1,2,3] and none of them work. I have also tried to assign the pins {sck=36, mosi=35, miso=37} (pinout: https://esp32s3.com/feathers3.html), but with no luck.

Here are the error messages with my various trials:

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=0) 
# --> OSError: (-259, 'ESP_ERR_INVALID_STATE')

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=1) 
# --> OSError: (-259, 'ESP_ERR_INVALID_STATE')

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=2) 
# --> OSError: (-258, 'ESP_ERR_INVALID_ARG')

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=3) 
# --> No error, but os.mount --> OSError: 16

sd = machine.SDCard(sck=machine.Pin(36), mosi=machine.Pin(35), miso=machine.Pin(37), cs=machine.Pin(7)) 
# --> OSError: (-259, 'ESP_ERR_INVALID_STATE')

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=2, sck=machine.Pin(36), mosi=machine.Pin(35), miso=machine.Pin(37), cs=machine.Pin(7)) 
# --> OSError: (-258, 'ESP_ERR_INVALID_ARG')

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=2, width=1, sck=machine.Pin(36), mosi=machine.Pin(35), miso=machine.Pin(37), cs=machine.Pin(7)) 
# --> OSError: (-258, 'ESP_ERR_INVALID_ARG')

sd = machine.SDCard(slot=3, sck=machine.Pin(36), mosi=machine.Pin(35), miso=machine.Pin(37), cs=machine.Pin(7)) 
# --> No error, but os.mount --> OSError: 16

What parameters I should put to the machine.SDCard(...) with our hardware setup? Or is there some other obvious mistake/error?

Or is this still somehow related to the earlier ESP32 SD-issues reported in #8217 and #8514 . The issue 8217 is apparently solved by @TGiles1998 with "> Solved: create a timeout and continue to os.mount() until connects", but I have no idea how to do that in my script.

[JuhaS2]

I believe this is still a bug or issue with ESP32-S3 hardware/port. Our solution was to switch to Teensy4.1 in which the SD works like a charm.