From: Nix <nix_at_esperi.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 23:36:49 +0100

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Mike Holden moaned:
> I'm guessing that under Linux you would use "dd"? For info, it would be
> useful if you could post the exact command you would use for dd to do
> this.

For sector 0:

dd if=/dev/{whatever-device} of=sector-0 bs=512 count=1

For sector 63:

dd if=/dev/{whatever-device} of=sector-0 bs=512 skip=63 count=1

(obviously, replace {whatever-device} with the right raw device name).

> Would a basic Linux boot disk be able to do this? A simple rescue disk
> like Tomsrtbt could give access to dd for this maybe?

dd, yes, but...

> It would also need
> the correct USB, scsi disk (sdmod) and USD200 drivers as well, so maybe
> would take a bit of messing around.

... tomsrtbt is using kernel 2.0, and proper USB-mass-storage support
wasn't available until 2.4.

> If this can be achieved, then a bootable floppy image could be
> made available.

It's easy enough (I could do it in half an hour or less, I guess), but
I've not yet got broadband, so making it available is kind of tricky.

The hardest part is adding enough devices to the kernel that it's likely
to be able to see your hard drive (so you can write the raw sectors
there). If it's OK to write the raw sectors into a file on the rockbox,
then it makes things a lot simpler (we just have to cope with the
UHCI/OHCI/EHCI mess then).

I'll have broadband in a couple of months; I could do it then.

-- 
`We cannot get a new line down the pipe due to a blockage and we cannot
 dig up the road to clear the blockage because it is covered with the
 wrong type of tarmac.' --- British Telecom, via Mark Lowes

Received on 2003-07-12