Got My 3100... So Before I Flash :)

[TheWalt]

I had a SL-C860 that I have been pleased with, but I treated myself to a SL-C3100 for xmas.  Seems just in time too with the latest pdaxrom beta1 and KDE.

Before I do anything, I have spent the last 2 hours reading forums trying to find this on my own with no luck (search has to be broken, seriously).

On the 860 I just repartitioned to a 121meg root and installed to there... everything was easy and ran great.  Now, I am totally lost with this 3100.

I asume if I repartition to the recomended 50meg as per instructions the rom itself will boot.  Now if I wanted to install IPK's to a SD on the 860 it had to be reformatted, does the internal HD work the same, or is it already good to go?  I read in one post that it was FAT so it was recognized in windows as a media storage device but then no other info past that statement.  Not to mention all the existing data that I'd probably want to remove somehow.

I'd love to get KDE installed on the HD (and other apps/data as well) so I can keep my 512 SD FAT for nand backup and general portability.  Hopefully I can do so, otherwise I'll be a tad dissapointed in all that unuseable space.

Thanks in advance

[TheWalt]

Bump of old post instead of starting a new one

[Meanie]

well, you can reformat the whole microdrive to linux fs and install apps there and not worry about being a plug and play device for windows. you can still share your files via samba.
alternatively, you could repartition the microdrive so that you got a fat partition and a linux partition.
the stuff that comes as default on the microdrive is useless anyways except for the dictionary files.

[TheWalt]

Ok, thats good news.  I hooked the 3100 to my windows machine and backed up all the data from the HD to it just to play it safe (rumor has it all that software is on the cd's anyway).  

Now, chances of me ever going back to the sharp rom is... well near zero.  But I did read about some possible issues with repartitioning.  There is I guess 3 default partitions and the first 2 have to be kept for some reason?  

But there are three partitions on the SL-C3100 HDD. So if the HDD
is totally blank without any partitions, the SL-C3100 won't boot up.
And this is how a SL-C3100 HDD partition table should look like:

/dev/hda1  Start 1  End 20  Blocks 10048+  id 83 System Linux
/dev/hda2  Start 21 End 40  Blocks 10080  id 83 System Linux
/dev/hda3  Start 41 End 7936 Blocks 3979584 id c System Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

Since from what I'm reading it sounds like once you screw up the HD it is much harder to 'put back' vs just reflashing the rom so I apologize for my questions, just want to do it right the first time

Thanks again in advance.

[adf]

if it helps, this about drove me mad at first too...

Finally I ended up doing this: (and it worked)

kill it, pull the power and batt, hit the reset for 5+ secs
1) flash as instructed by the docs---
use the nand utils to change 64 meg limit
REBOOT
kill it, pull the power and batt, hit the reset for 5+ secs
REBOOT
2)use nand tools to repartition the nand ( I used 96..though the docs say 58 is good)
REBOOT
kill it, pull the power and batt, hit the reset for 5+ secs
3).Flash (install new system)
reboot from menu

If you use hostap, now would be a good time to install it to flash ( I suffered some confusion on hostap installation and found this works well-- doing it right off before any new weirdness causes installation problems)

I unmounted all hd partitions and ran cfdisk /dev/hda

put partition2 as swap ( I use @128M) at beginning of drive
By putting partition 1 at the end of the drive

This way, pdaxrom automatically mounts /dev/hda1 as /mnt/ide and links on reboot, and swap is on the "fastest" part of the drive

I've been doing the swap manually (1 instance of mksap /dev/hda2  then swapon or swapoff /dev/hda when wanted. ) I'm sure it can be done automatically.. just haven't pursued it

reboot...  and all should be well.

1 BIG warning though....  for some reason mine prefers the external to the internal cf as hda. That is to say that if you have a cf card or drive in your external slot on rebooting (not coming out of suspend, that works fine) then it will tend to mount that external card as /mnt/ide and give you a nasty surprise.  No damage is done, however and rebooting without a data device in the external slot brings everything back to normal

[TheWalt]

if it helps, this about drove me mad at first too...

Ok, here are my thoughts.

I agree with your 96mb nand partition.. I did the 58meg to start since I wanted to avoid any 'hacks' but I know from past experience some apps just have to be on root to work best and 96 seems to be a good split.  <edit : Done>

After pdaxrom install I also noticed when I plug usb into computer it no longer is recognized as a storage device (in fact it thinks it's a SL-C1000) and didn't see where you could configure it to act as one so I guess there really is no reason to keep a FAT partition at all. <edit : Done, figured out you have to select the partition... which has the added benifit of being used as a CF/SD reader now also>

So my final questions are do you have to retain those 3 partitions or did you just make 2 (swap and main)?  Also, if I do decide to go back to Cacko (just keeping bases covered), I asume setting up the origional partition scheme should be all that is necessary for that to work since I don't care about the installed software (also since it seems they use hda3 for usb drive access)?  Or do those files on the first 2 partitions have to be there also?

Thanks again for the help in advance.