OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: unholy on September 12, 2004, 04:52:55 pm

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: unholy on September 12, 2004, 04:52:55 pm

My Zaurus crashed on me the last day. I had to take out the battery. When I restarted, it wouldnt boot up fully unless I ripped out the CF card.

Now when I put the card in, it either locks up the OS, or it doesnt acknowledge it.

(by acknowledge, I mean that although the icon comes up on the taskbar, the files are not displayed in the documents tab, and the applications no longer give the option of saving to the CF card.

I was considering putting OpenZaurus on my 5600, but the image has to be put on the CF card first, so is seems that I am snookered! Is this fixable? I have no important data so I'm willing to try anything.

Apologies if this has been asked before - I have searched, but due to my newbie ness, I either havent understood replies, or dont know if they apply to my situation.

Regards,

unholy!

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: unholy on September 12, 2004, 08:11:57 pm

Ive just realized that my Zaurus is actually an SL-5500 with ROM version 2.39 for correctness sake.

Ive tried a hard reset, and now whenever I put in the CF card, the whole thing locks up.

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: doseas on September 13, 2004, 05:12:09 pm

Sounds like the filesystem on the card got corrupted.  Open a terminal (console) window and type dmesg.  Examine the messages for errors regarding the CF card.

Can you put the CF card in a card reader on your PC and read from it successfully?  How about writing to it??

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: unholy on September 13, 2004, 05:18:22 pm

Thanks for your reply doseas.

I dont think I can access the terminal on the 5500. I just have the default software. I dont have a CF card reader for the PC either.

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: cradlinski on September 13, 2004, 05:50:57 pm

I concur with doseas' diagnosis.  I had the exact same problem and it was due to a corrupt CF filesystem.  Reformatting the CF card fixed it.

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: unholy on September 13, 2004, 06:24:24 pm

Thank you both. In that case, how can I avoid this happening again? I believe the culprit was a 3rd party app. Should I just avoid these in future?

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: unholy on September 14, 2004, 12:56:18 pm

Ok, I didnt realize that the terminal application can be installed without open zaurus.

Is it possible to format the card from here?

Remember, thr system crashes when I insert the card, so I have to disable the auti mounting first.

How do I do these?

Regards,

unholy

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: cradlinski on September 14, 2004, 02:24:00 pm

I reformatted the card under Windows with a cheap USB CF card reader.

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: zaurusbs on September 14, 2004, 02:26:00 pm

out of curiosity, what format did you format the card in? fat16 or something else? i think fat16 is the default under windows.

Title: SL-5600 having midlife crisis.
Post by: cradlinski on September 14, 2004, 02:41:51 pm

If I recall correctly (I don't use Windows much), the two options were "FAT" and "FAT32."  I chose "FAT."