What a day.. 12 hours fiddling. When the z is good, it's GOOD. BUT when I start to fiddle... We grow through pain.

To cut the story short, I replaced the HD in my 3100 with a CF. I couldn't format the card on my desktop (another nightmare story) so I thought I'd just throw it in and see what happened.

Not much.

After discovering the console in the bootloader (by pressing D+B after power is added - for a long time), I set the CF to the correct HDD1/2/3 values using fdisk (HDD1=1-20,83 HDD2=21-40,83 HDD3=41+ c). At last, I could now get it to boot, but only when I choose "restore the hard disk" (or whatever it's called in the startup menu thing) - a standard try at booting just ends in the message, "Hard disk not initialised". Well, at least it kind of boots.

OK, another 6 hours before bed - I can do this.

I then found the reason. The Z doesn't want to give you the time of day unless HDD1 and HDD2 have a few tiny, pointless files in a directory called ".sys", so I downloaded them with the intention of finishing this madness and getting some sleep (Trisoft, my hero).

And this is where I stand now. I've got the files, I've got a machine that can eventually boot normally (with a bit of fiddling), and I can even write normally to HDD3, but I have absolutely NO idea how to copy the files onto HDD1/2 on the card. Everytime I try to write to the card it says "Read only file system" GRRRRRH!HHHHHR!!!!!"$!"#$RSDAF!!!!!! are you doing this deliberately? I was VERY close to demonstrating Newtons laws with the Z and a concrete floor.

2:40am, I've had enough. How do I write those tiny little files to HDD1/HDD2 without it moaning at me? Is there a magic command that makes a filesystem read/write? and why oh why does HDD3 work! It's teasing me, isn't it. Playing with me for kicks.

Try "mount -oremount,rw /dev/hda1" (or whichever device). This works in regular desktop linux, and it works on my zaurus 6000 (for the read-only root), so I think it will work in your case.

Thanks derekp. After trying what you said, it complained that "can't find it in fstab"; this is a current fstab dump:

/dev/mtdblock2 / jffs2 noatime 1 1
/dev/mtdblock3 /home jffs2 defaults,noatime 1 2
none /dev/shm tmpfs size=1m,noauto 0 0
/dev/mmcda1 /mnt/card auto noauto,owner 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0

If I edit this file, and boot up without adding those little HDD1/2 files, it will come up with the usual message of "HDD not initialised", but I can't add those files because it's read-only - an annoying vicious circle. The only way to boot up is to go through the service menu and start again (thus clearing any changes and bringing me back to square one). I can't believe it's THIS difficult to write those files..

For extra info, here is my DF output:

Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 32768 32768 0 100% /
/dev/root 32768 32768 0 100% /
/dev/mtdblock3 91136 6176 84960 7% /home
/dev/ram1 44 29 15 66% /dev
none 1024 44 980 4% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1 9725 1043 8180 11% /hdd1
/dev/hda2 9755 1043 8208 11% /hdd2
/dev/hda3 978856 4 978852 0% /hdd3
/dev/hdc1 1997536 396640 1600896 20% /usr/mnt.rom/cf

and I'm running Trisofts rom (the only rom that lets me actually boot!).

If anybody out there has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it; never knew how much I needed the Z until it went.

Try this as root:

mount -o remount,rw /dev/hda1 /hdd1

Fantastic! Thanks for that, it worked a treat. You're a lifesaver. I feel GOOOOD!

I plan to bottle the feeling I have now, and sell it via paypal. Interested parties please let me know.

Amazing how the Z can just bring me to my knees like that.. worst thing is, I'm up for more punishment; I won't be happy unless debian is up and running. You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson.

thanks for the post. Im planning of doing something like this to a c-3100 or c-3200 depending on what i feel like.

The CF card idea appealed to me mainly because my batteries last longer; I have a feeling that even when the MD "spins down", it draws a little more power than it should.

As far as my original proble, everything is fine... except one thing: I don't seem to be able to access HDD1/2 through the terminal. I have a feeling it's an fstab thing (now at the limit of my puny knowledge).

If someone has a minute, can someone post the contents of a "standardish" fstab file? Just so that I have an idea. Thanks.

As soon as everything is AOK, I want to get debian up and running - mainly so that I can get access to a decent flash-card program for my studies; bit of an overkill but haven't seen anything else out there that runs directly on the Z.

yep-exactly.....flashcard program. tkc has one "soq" but its not robust nor transferable to other card programs

Got Debian up and running.. easier than I thought.. but deleted it soon after. I think it's just too "heavy" for the 'ole Z. Looks and acts the business, but as I said, a bit of overkill for what I use it for. I'd also have to charge the battery a lot more often..

If you hear of any good flashcard programs out there, let me know. "JMemorize" looks the business (interval learning, bar graphs) but my java machine is too low a version for it.