OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => Sharp Zaurus => Model Specific Forums => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => 5x00 General discussions => Topic started by: patbob on December 03, 2004, 09:13:27 pm

Title: Got A 128mb Cf To Work For Flashing Sl-5000d
Post by: patbob on December 03, 2004, 09:13:27 pm
I don't know who, if anyone, might be interested in this, so I figured I'd post it here.

I managed to get a 128MB CF card to work for flashing the ROM.  It could mount it when the kernel was booted but not flash from it.  Previously, all attempts would result in it the green mail and amber charge light coming on for a second, then going off.  I can only assume the CF driver in the updater program can't handle the same cards that the one compiled into the kernel can.

My solution was to make a 31M partition on the front of the card and use that.

Details (I don't know if all the steps were important):
1) Wipe the entire device to zeros via a dd
2) use fdisk to create new DOS partition table.
3) add a primary partition to it that starts at the first "cylinder" and is 31MB in size.
4) change the partition type to 4 (fdisk lists that one as "FAT16 <32M").
5) use mkdosfs to create a fat16 filesystem on it (use the -F16 option).

Then, when I used it for flashing, I put only the files I was flashing on it.  Worked like a champ.  To change files, I was paranoid and trying to rescue a confused zaurus, so I redid the whole dd/partition/format process with each set of files.

I did the flashing through the diagnostic menu on the Z because that was all that would work on it, but I suspect if it works there, it works for hte normal C+D+reset method.

hope this helps someone.
patbob