This only works on OSX and it involves a lot of messing around on the command line, but it works. I'm looking at my audrey right now that I just flashed her with the infinitAudrey.zip image I downloaded from audreyhacking.com. Under X you have basically the same tools as Audrey uses to create the image in the first place.
The other thing you will need is some kind of an interface to plug in the CF card to your Mac. In my case it was a PC Card Adaptor that goes into the PC card slot on my laptop. If you have a desktop mac it MIGHT work with a regular USB adaptor it might not. I'll describe what is necessary and you should be able to tell.
When you plug in the CF card into one of those adaptors does it mount like a regular disk? Or does it only work with some odd software? If it mounts like a disk then you're on the right track. (I mean any Mac formatted cards here obviously, an Audrey formatted image will not mount on your mac)
When you insert the card you will get the "There are no usable volumes" or some such message and options to Eject, Format or Continue. You want to click continue. This will attach the disk to your filesystem but wont try to mount it. This is exactly what we need since the images are in a format that we couldn't mount anyway.
If you have an image with a partition on it that is mounted, then you have to somehow unformat it so that you can get it to attach, but not mount. Once the system has mounted it you can't unmount it without also detaching it. You may be able to do this by re-partitioning and not formatting in drive setup, but the easiest way is to just throw it in your audrey and follow the instructions to copy your current audrey setup into it. Then you can properly half mount it in your mac.
When you click continue the CF card will be attached to the dev-fs file system in the /dev directory. These disks are numbered dynamically as you go. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you do these things to the right entry! If you copy the image into your boot disk it will completely hose up your disk and you'll have to repartition/format your OSX machine and start from scratch.
Open a terminal window and type "cd /dev [return]"
type "ls [return]" to see a long list of all the partitions, drives and consoles and other interesting low level unix things. If you are on a machine with a single drive you'll see a bunch of entries for things like:
disk0
disk0s1
disk0s1s0
rdisk0
rdisk0s1
etc...
if you have more disks you'll see higher numbers that the disk0. The cf card will be numbered the highest disk (probably, unless you've got a lot of images mounted or something like that)
But you can almost certainly tell which it is because it will only have 2 entries. "disk1" and "rdisk1" there will be no 0s1s2 type entries like there are for the other disks. You can also try removing the card, redoing the ls and then putting the card back in and doing the ls again. You'll see the correct entry go away and come back.
Now you need to make the drive entry writeable so type this:
sudo chmod a+x /dev/disk1 [return]
Of course, replace the disk1 with whatever number you have decided the CF card is. It will ask you for your administrator password, go ahead and enter it.
Once you've downloaded the image you want to load type this into the terminal:
cat[space]
at this point drag and drop the file that you downloaded and unzipped into the terminal window, this will just put it's path into the command so that you dont have to mess around with typing the path. Now finish typing it so that you have something like this:
cat[space]/path/to/the/big/image.cf[space]>[space]/dev/disk1[return]
while, of course, replacing your drive number in case it's not disk1. Really folks, I can't make this any clearer. If you get that wrong you will destroy all the data on a disk.
When thats done I think you can just pop the card out, but just to be nice unmount it correctly like this:
hdiutil eject disk1
it will give you some errors after it says "disk successfully ejected" thats just because it can't unload drivers because it never loaded any drivers for it. you can ignore those. remove the CF card from your Mac. Switch off your audrey. DO NOT pull the plug on the audrey while there is a CF card in there, it definitely messes up the CF circuitry on Audrey, I have one that will read cards but will not write to them anymore becuase I did this.
Once the audrey is off, put in the CF card, hold down just the datebook button and plug it back in. It will boot from the card, but still use data already on your internal system. It's a little strange, but if it comes up then the image is good and you can go ahead and load from it. If it wont load then something went wrong. Pull out the card BEFORE you pull the plug. Pull the plug, count to 5. Put the card back in and hold the datebook and powerkey at the same time while plugging it back in. It will load the image!
It works! You don't need a PC, but you do need Mac OS X. If anyone tried this with a USB reader please let us know as more people probably have those than the PC card adaptors. Although, if you have OSX on a laptop you can get one of these adaptors for under 10 bucks. Any one will work, no special mac drivers required.
Enjoy, I'm going to bed.
James
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James Sentman <james@sentman.com> http://www.sentman.com
Enterprise server monitoring for Mac OS X: http://whistleblower.sentman.com
