Hello all,
I've obtained a pair of MAUSB-10 XD/smartmedia writers which allow raw access via linux. I'm hoping to be able to use them to load a boot image on a smartmedia or XD card.
If I'm successful, I'm more than willing to "seed" bootable cards in some form. IE: Someone sends me a blank card, I'll image it, and return in the Self addressed & stamped envelope, etc.
What we need to get started is a dd image of a tweaked card so I can get bootstraped.
Before anyone raises concerns over copyright issues, several aspects should make this a reasonable approach. 1) We are not selling anything, copyrighted or not. 2) We are not redistributing copyrighted media like films/music which is the big target. 3) The items in question (cartridges) can be had for under a dollar in closeouts. 4) I'm not sure you can copyright a number...... which is all the byte in the key blocks are. You can copyright code, but we are not distributing code. Just pointers to memory locations. 5) Intent still counts in copyright issues. And if there is concern over distribution, we should also be concerned about reverse engineering & modification, as they are equally damning. (And clearly have been done & documented)
But all of this is moot, as we are just trying to use our orphanware. We bought a product, which has now been obsoleted by it's mfg. We are not looking to pirate/distribute emsoft code, just use the code we bought in the form of the juicebox.
Maybe if we are really paranoid, we make people show proof of owning a cart, so they will be getting code they already have in backup form. 
The real trick would be to make an image with only the ID bytes in the right blocks. Or better yet, write a script or C program which writes a test file of bytes. Again, you can't copyright a number in a file. Code you can, but not numbers. (Yes, I know op codes in programs are also numbers, but that's not what we are talking about here.
Again, with the MAUSB-10, it would be easy to do trial & error tests to isolate which areas it looks for, and mimic that.
But to get started we'd need an image of some form. Rather than post the image and raise concerns of distribution, if someone wants to email me one they can at: alan at pinztrek doott com.
I'm thinking we should just be able to dd in from the MAUSB-10 character device as the alauda driver does the translation to translate from the block oriented XD structure to full scsi emulation. (dd if=/dev/xyz of=file.bin bs=512 count=2 should work) But even if we had to use the block device it should not be difficult.
Anyway, I'm game to give it a try, and believe it will remove a substantial barrier to using the juicebox. Certainly should add to the number of people coding for the Juicebox.
all input welcome! And if we still stall on this, I'm going to contact emsoft and see if I can't get permission to use the ID bytes from the cart for non-commercial use in the fair use context.
Alan
