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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff V3 Flash EZ Play by Play V3 Flash EZ Play by Play

V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) 8-Toes V3 flashed! Here's the EZ play by play: Items used: 1. - V3 I-Opener 2. - T8 Security Torx Driver (not a bit) 3. - 2.5" toshiba laptop HD 500meg model mk1924. 4. - I-Opener -> 2.5" laptop drive (swapped) cable. 5. - PC with Linux and 3.5 -> 2.5 laptop drive adapter. 6. - V2 QNX image with QNXFlash and V1 bios. steps taken: 1. Ordered torx from Digikey (www.digikey.com) part #xptx600-nd $24.50 (set of 6 drivers) 2. opened case of v3. 3. downloaded v2 qnx image from www.freedrive.com user:iopener password:iopener file: iop_v2_sandisk_dump.gz 4. Hooked up drive to linux box 5. unzip v2 image. With this command: "gunzip iop_v2_sandisk_dump.gz" This will create the image file "iop_v2_sandisk_dump" 6. Run fdisk against your target drive. for example: Our command was: "fdisk /dev/hdc" (hdc = first drive on the second ide channel) 7. Go into the advanced fdisk menu by pressing "x". Choose "c" for cylinders, set to 490. Choose "h" for heads, set to 2. choose "s" for sectors, set to 32. choose "w" to write. (should also exit.) 8. Write the image with the dd command. Enter command: "dd if=iop_v2_sandisk_dump of=/dev/hdc" Note: again our drive was hdc yours may be different. 9. Install drive in I-Opener. 10. Set I-Opener BIOS as follows: During boot sequence, press Ctrl+Alt+Esc to get to the bios setup. In "Standard CMOS Setup" - change drive C to "None,None" change drive D to "490,2,65535,489,32,NORMAL" (the 65535, and the 489 aren't used) In "BIOS Features Setup" - change the boot sequence to "D,A,SCSI" 11. boot the i-opener. If you get the message "HARD DISK FAILURE" or you hear a female voice for the i-opener intro, then you have go back and re-check your work. (from here on out should be familiar ground to anyone whose done a V2 qnxflash) 12. Bring up the QNX prompt via the TAB,444 method. At this point you should have a "#" prompt. 13. Enter the command: "cd app/ztest" 14. Enter the command "ls -al" to check to see if the files are all there. You should see: qnxflash, and the bios_image_256k.bin and some others. 15. Start the flashing with the command: "qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin" 16. reboot, and enjoy! 05-12-2000 16:39:47

Update for the linux challenged (modified 0 times) 8-Toes I just tried this freeware program called "dolly" for the drive dump under dos/windows. Works great! In order to do this with out linux: get these two shareware programs: Winzip for unzipping the .gz drive image file @ http://www.winzip.com Dolly for raw sector writing the file @ http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000V6M,.html Don't bother with fdisk just get the 2.5 inch drive up (physically only) under dos/windows and have the image and whese two progams available. unzip the image with winzip and run Dolly with these parameters: "dolly imagfilename hd129:" where hd129 = is the secondary drive (read the .txt that comes with dolly) The drive image should write out 31360 sectors. Follow the above EZ Play by Play from step 9. 05-12-2000 17:53:30

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Terri This is just what I needed! However, I am getting an "unexpected error" when trying to download the .gz file. Also, is the folder password protected for downloading only? Also, whoever set this up (thanks!) but please if possible set the password for downloading only. We wouldn't want someone to upload a bogus file. Thanks again! 05-12-2000 19:06:27

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) cyrixone It's official and verified! The V3 I-Opener has been hacked! Again, removal of goo has been rendered obsolete. Three strikes, Netpliance - you're out! 1. Download the QNX image and DOLLY. If you don't already have QNXFLASH and the old BIOS, get that too. 2. Connect the hard drive you plan to use to your computer (to make things easy, connect it as secondary master - that way you don't have to play with any jumper settings). 3. Boot up your computer and go into the BIOS settings. Set the drive as 490 cylinders, 2 heads, 32 sectors. Change the translation to LBA (trust me, it fixes a problem). Save settings and proceed to boot into DOS MODE. 4. Run the command "dolly [filename] hdXXX" Where XXX is the number of your hard drive (as the post said before, read the included manual file). ex: dolly iov2qnx.bin hd129 5. Shut down your computer, and disconnect the drive. Connect it to the I-Opener. 6. Go into the BIOS setup and set both master and slave drives to 490,2,32 - normal translation. 7. Go into "Bios Feature Setup" and change boot order to D, A, SCSI. 8. Reboot you've got QNX running from the hard drive! Now, since everyone wants proof these days before they shell out some cash on a cable (here's a hint - make you're own... It's very easy). Here's a picture I just took of my I-Opener running QNX FROM A HARD DRIVE! http://members.aol.com/amdinside/hackio.jpg 05-12-2000 20:55:02

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) cyrixone Another picture, this time from the rear: http://members.aol.com/amdinside/rearview.jpg Interesting things to notice: Normal AT power supply Standard fan and heatsink on I-Opener Modified 40-pin IDE cable TANDY PS/2 keyboard (Yep, a genuine AT/XT autoswitch keyboard!) Laptop drive adapter used in reverse VGA Monitor used as I-Opener "stand" 05-12-2000 21:43:51

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 If I set my drive in BIOS to 490/2/32, Dolly reports the qnxv2dump will run, not to 31360 sectors, but only to 30240 - it adjuts the number of sectors to be copied, says needs range 0-31359, and has only 0-30239 avail. What am I missing here? Tried this both with LBA and Normal in BIOS???? 05-13-2000 07:38:05

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Kevin OPUS33 what was the command tht you used and what is the size of your qnxv2dump file? File size should be 16056320 bytes. 05-13-2000 08:03:19

CHS settings for dolly (modified 0 times) 8-Toes At first I thought I was gonna need an old OLD OLD drive like before the ide auto detection days. I was wrong... The C/H/S is translated anyway... Leave it as auto (it will detect and use the actual CHS) on the PC side, just Dolly the first 31360 sectros. Set the I-Opener BIOS to 490/2/32, as the BIOS on the IO checks this for during boot. that's How I did it. 05-13-2000 08:10:12

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 I have the right file size on the image file - Dolly for some reason had a problem with the sector size writing to the disk - I let the PC BIOS detect the drive normally and let Dolly write, which it did fine. Now to crack open the Iopener for the final step . . . 05-13-2000 08:23:51

md5 signature (modified 0 times) trout Can the uploader of the V2 sandisk image verify the md5 signature of the file? The ungzipped file (16056320 bytes) gives me: 39c32eb34874229a4ee1d2d03139053f I'll be able to verify this version when my cables come in next week. 05-13-2000 10:45:02

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) welldarn As of 5/13 19:28 EDT, I couldn't get the logins to either xdrive or freedrive to work. I got bad user/pw responses in both cases. It might matter that I'm running netscape 4.7 on a Mac, but historically, that's rarely been an issue. Perhaps the above sites got threatening legal noise? The geocities site above did still work, FWIW. I was able to "visit" the idrive site, iopener user, but no files showed up in the shared area. Can someone else check so I know if it's truly a problem, or a system issue on my end? 05-13-2000 16:39:01

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 Confirmed: The v2 qnx image will allow you to flash the BIOS back to v1 on a v3 IO - Nothin but net . . . (this is what the v1 bios logo says - cute huh?) As long as you remember to put the heat sink back on (with a notch cut for the HD cable) and make the HD the active part., you can boot to Win9x/Linux/Beos/WhateverOS fine. Here's the question - say I get bored with my new toy and want to get back to IO QNX and give the thing to my in-laws to be used as originaly intended, how can I do this? Can I use the v3 QNX with the v1 BIOS? What are the settings? I have messed around a bit and have been unable to boot the v3 QNX - it just hangs at the BIOS screen? Thanks, Op. 05-13-2000 19:54:17

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) kevin opus33 if there is a problem with the v3 sandisk and the v1 bios you could qnxflash back to the v2/v3 bios which is also on the sandisk image that was posted . 05-13-2000 21:08:51

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) cyrixone I'd highly recommend putting another OS on the I-Opener before giving it away. Netpliance's service offering is overpriced and gives them complete control over the hardware (they could reflash the BIOS with garbage, "zapping" the I-Opener if they felt like it). There are plenty of operating systems that will fit on the 16MB Sandisk - the NewDeal OS (based on GEOS) isn't a bad choice. 05-13-2000 21:41:48

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 Kevin: I saw v2, didn't see v3, should have made a backup, doh, but I'm sure someone will post one somewhere Cyrixone: I agree 100%, but lets remember my in-laws are idiots, and so Netpliance's QNX and service are the only things they have a chance of using sucessfully :) The I-Opener is actually quite cool if you want nothing to do but send email and basic web-surfing. I'd buy them a new one but, what'cha know, there are none in the stores and the TOS are oppressive. 05-13-2000 22:13:30

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Richard+Nixon 2 things: 1) Warning: Freedrive logs your IP when you download any files. I didn't notice this at first but it's true. I don't know if they could legally do anything though, or if they will notice a huge number of different IPs d/ling from the iopener account. 2) What exactly is making some hard drives work and others not? Does it just have to old enough not to report its settings automagically? Do we want to start a list of hard drives that _will_ boot? I'll crosspost on this and the QNX trick worked thread. 05-14-2000 07:40:48

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) IO+curious Is there a list of the various BIOS signons? Mine says 4.51PG. From the postings, it looks like there were 3 releases so far. The first could use any hard drive geometry, the 3rd must match SunDisk, and it is unclear how the 2nd behaved. FWIW, the BIOS chip has gray potting on it and the case has philips screws around the border, non-tamper-proof Torx holding the pedestal. In this version, ctrl alt home is NOT good enough to start BIOS setup, you must use ESC on a real PC keyboard. Although I have been pulling the power cord to power off, holding down the power button 4-5 seconds seems to hard-off like a PC with ATX power supply does. Sounds like I cannot go back to using the v3 QNX image unless I reinstall the v3 BIOS... other issues: 1) In the latest QNX image NPLS uses, the lack of passwd shadow file doesn't seem to limit their ability to boot their apps; perhaps in QNX scripts and apps don't really need a userid (unlike UNIX family). One post mentioned that some feature was part of a "POSIX compatibility layer" added to QNX -- as if POSIX (probably including logins) are a thin veneer, easily stripped off or ignored. 2) Similarly, there is no reason to believe future IO would have BIOS setup accessible by any method at all. This hack is unfortunately hackable. We are playing a spy-vs-spy game, similar to the cable descrambler market, with less manufacturer inertia. 3) In some of the other threads, people were trying to program SunDisk via IDE, without CPU intervention, postulating that NPLS uses that mode to burn that flash during manufacture. Far more likely they are burned before soldering, or they attach a hard drive with an image of QNX or some other OS, which has a startup script to burn the Sundisk with the OS image we see today, as well as flashing the BIOS. There might be a pass-1 BIOS that does allow large drives, only used once. 4) Since Linux doesn't use the BIOS much after boot (or maybe after the first stage of boot), why bother to flash the BIOS at all today? All that is necessary is for the first partition to be good enough to get past the first stage of boot using the geometry the BIOS insist upon, then it could be using other partitions that assume a geometry that allows access to the rest of the disk? 5) Disk Manager and other partitioning utilities are capable of storing a program in the Master Boot Record (MBR) (half of the first physical sector, which also contains the partition table) and a few other sectors that replaces the BIOS's routines that care about geometry, to allow many-gigabyte drives to work on old PC BIOS. Why isn't that applicable to our IO BIOS geometry pains? 6) I bought the Imation external USB floppy drive for macintosh and tried it in IO. During boot, the drive light went on twice, and if a floppy was inserted it would spin briefly, but it never had any effect on the boot process. I think it was just the USB getting reset... W98 on a desktop PC wasn't capable of booting the floppy, either, but PC's were never as cheap/stupid as Mac's. I have seen PC bios's capable of booting SuperDrive's but (a) this isn't one of those and (b) those BIOS's expected superdrive to be hooked internally, not via USB. Bottom line: it's going back tomorrow. 05-14-2000 11:04:37

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Ben Dover Looking through my v2's startup scripts, it specifically copies the shadow password file to /etc/shadow. However, the file is already there (I can log in before the scripts run); it must be present in the ramdisk image. Chances are, they just deleted it from the ramdisk image, and are relying on the script to restore it. 05-14-2000 11:56:42

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) IO+curious Ben Dover writes: >Looking through my v2's So what version does your BIOS claim to be if you hit tab during boot to see it? How do you define "v2"? >startup scripts, it specifically copies the shadow >password file to /etc/shadow. Doesn't this imply that the script doesn't mind running before passwords are OK? And if that doesn't care, why should anything else in the system? >However, the file is already there (I can log in before the scripts run); >it must be present in the ramdisk image. I can type a userid and password and (always)fail (and type ctrl alt enter to see an alternate console) for 10 seconds before the big arrow mouse cursor appears. Then the game is up. When do you mean when you refer to before or after scripts run? >Chances are, they just deleted it from the ramdisk image, and are relying >on the script to restore it. Why should they bother? 05-14-2000 14:01:47

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) kevin This is for opus33 as far as the difference between the v2 and v3 I don't think they changed the bios (only the sandisk) but if they did I can find out as I did make a copy on mine and I'll check it later in the week and post the info in this thread. 05-14-2000 14:42:15

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 Kevin: Thanks, I'll look for your update. 05-14-2000 19:47:10

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) cdn_in_Ca how do you know if you have a V3, V2 etc...? 05-14-2000 21:21:22

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) IO+Curious 8-Toes: How did you have the drive jumpered? This may be relevant to whether the IO boots properly, in addition to the IO's BIOS setup's "standard" section, since some other threads on this board have postulated that only an old drive could hide the builtin SunDisk, and they might have been ignoring the drive's jumpering. I think the position and meaning of jumpers is the same in all 2.5" IDE drives, unlike SCSI and 3.5" and 5.25" IDE, which are all over the map. According to my Seagate ST9100A 2.5" 80 MB thin drive manual, on the block of 4 pins facing the same way as the 44 connected to IDE/power, pins A&B are the outermost, pins C&D are closer to IDE connector, and this is the interpretation: - no jumpers master alone - C jumpered to D master, slave present - A jumpered to B slave - A to B, C to D reserved 05-15-2000 06:09:55

Problems.. (modified 0 times) mistertwo Profile I'm having problems booting to a 170 MB IBM drive I got when I purchased my i-opener. I verified the drive works by putting it into my laptop and booting, it came up in Windows 3.1 (what was previously on there). I ran scandisk and surface scan, and everything appears to be fine with the drive. I then burned the V2 Sandisk image to a CDROM with DOLLY and some Win95 tools. I followed the directions and imaged the drive correctly with dolly (it said successful). So I took the drive out of my laptop and attatched it to the i-opener with the IDE Cable. The BIOS will recognize the drive automatically if set to AUTO and I can hear the drive spin up and initialize. I went into the CMOS settings and set everything correctly by CHS and proceded to boot. I got a DISK BOOT FAILURE (or something similar, it was late). Any ideas? Thanks, Charles 05-15-2000 07:10:03

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Honkey Lips OK, got the v1 BIOS on my IO (was v3) and can run from harddrive. Now that the V1 Bios is there, I'd like to get the V1 SanDisk image on as well. I believe to have the harddrive working, I must push the Sandisk off, is this true? Seems I should be able to have both active at once with V1 BIOS. I'd have /dev/hd0 and /dev/hd1 and could copy the hd0 image to hd1? 05-15-2000 18:44:50

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) B1Bob Finally, I got to boot from HD. The disk had a bootable copy of Win98 on it. Dolly seemed to be coping iov2san to disk, but disk wouldn't boot in the IO. Checked and double checked IO BIOS settings. I had to completely delete partition info and then use Ranish Partition Mgr. to setup fat16 part. Used Dolly to write iov2san image to HD. Success. I get into console mode via ESC, 4,4,4 and get the '#' prompt. CD into /app/ztest. ls -al shows the files I'm expecting. Attempt a BIOS flash by entering 'qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin' Error message 'qnxflash: not found' Permissions on qnxflash are 'rwxr_xr_x' It seems to me that I should be at '/root' I don't know that I am or not. When I try to login as root, I can't get past the Password. Anybody have comments, advice, help. TYIA 05-15-2000 22:02:39

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Shane Most ~UNIX's (for security reasons) do not include the current directory in the path. In order to execute files in your current directory, you have to preface it with './'. 05-15-2000 23:59:34

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) PuffinStuff Mannnnnn, OK, I wrote an image with Dolly and successfully booted toi the # prompt (the tutorial waited running in the background waiting for me to press enter) and did the cd app/ztest and see all the proper files(qnxflash and bios_image_256k.bin) So I type in qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin and get qnxflash: not found not a newbie to hacking or hardware/dos/win but qnx(or lin/unix) I am not What am I doing wrong?? 05-16-2000 00:05:49

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) PuffinStuff My question was answered.....weird....Thnaks.... 05-16-2000 00:06:52

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 I was pretty damned confused by the 'qnxflash not found' message for a while, then combing through print outs from the board I saw the './' prefix, wierd, never used a unix that wanted that before, oh well. 05-16-2000 05:53:59

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) no-nick It's standard for a root account to not have the current directory in the $PATH, or else a cracker could put a trojan somewhere and call it, for instance, ls, and have it run instead of the real ls or other common command. 05-16-2000 09:07:28

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) bovine I think I transferred the SANdisk image OK using Dolly to an IBM DARA-20600 (6.0GB) from which I had used FDISK to remove all existing partitions. Dolly said 31360 sectors successfully transferred. Made the BIOS changes, but hangs at "IOPENER" screen. Reboot and Tab-444 gets a screen with 03/23/2000-VP4-606-1PC_VIAC-00 at bottom and messages added repeatedly every few seconds "Still waiting for access to path /dev/hd0t77" I assume this means it's not reading the hard disk for some reason. Any suggestions? Thanks, Jim 05-16-2000 13:37:07

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) bovine found my error- syntax error in my Dolly command (Jeez, Jim), which should have been: dolly iop_v2~1 hd128: on my Win95 DOS-booted w/ target my only IDE asnd two SCSI drives. Once the image went, I can boot the IO, tet to QNX but it proceesd to boot and play the (man's voice) demo. I think I can find the answert to that with further study, but if anyone wants to make it easy for me ... 05-16-2000 14:51:05

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) i-bill bovine: You're there! Just hit tab-4444 at the boot to get into root. Once you get the # prompt, simply type ./app/stop-apps to kill the demo and then go about running the qnxflash. Congratulations! ====================== See above: 12. Bring up the QNX prompt via the TAB,4444 method. At this point you should have a "#" prompt. 13. Enter the command: "cd app/ztest" 14. Enter the command "ls -al" to check to see if the files are all there. You should see: qnxflash, and the bios_image_256k.bin and some others. 15. Start the flashing with the command: "qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin" 05-16-2000 15:05:31

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) bovine using the image from http://www.geocities.com/iopener33/ when it boots I've yet to see a QNX # prompt, Sometimes I can get a brief login: prompt. Entering "root", blank password doesn't do it. I'm still missing something. I also haven't figured out why I get a login prompt some times but not others. 05-16-2000 16:24:29

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) bovine Success! I had been hitting Tab-4444 too soon, rather than waiting for th initial IOPENER screen to disappear. My admiration to all of you who figured this out. 05-16-2000 18:17:45

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 Apologies in advance for this lame posting, but hell, I'm doing this from my newly hacked IO, yeah it looks kinda strange with the HD hanging out the top, but hell, it works. Now, where's that velcro? I just wanted to thank those who came up with these few threads re: booting from the sandisk image on this v3, genius, pure genius. Opus3 05-16-2000 19:55:44

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) CheapBrew I have to agree with Opus33. His post is lame. Actually, the contributors to this thread deserve a tall cold one. I was able to get a hard drive hanging off the top of my iOpener in about an hour and a half, no cutting, scraping, no whatever needed. The basic instructions worked to the letter. As i-Bill mentioned, running ./app/stop-apps after the tab-4444 bit makes life a tad easier. props to all... 05-16-2000 21:02:24

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) 8-Toes I'm glad to do my part..... but... the real tall cold one award goes to whoever wrote qnxflash, we couldn't have done it without 'em. 8-Toes. 05-16-2000 22:05:36

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) BillyBob can those who had a success post the hdd that they were using? i'm curious because i've tried a couple 2.5inch and a couple 3.5inch and i still no success.... thanks for any posts! 05-18-2000 21:27:18

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) CheapBrew I used the IBM 2.5 inch 1.2gig drive that compgeeks has been selling. Be aware of all the details in step 10 from 8-toes. I almost gave up until I realized that I forgot to set the correct boot sequence (D,A,SCSI) in the iOpener. Good luck! 05-18-2000 22:11:45

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) BillyBob heh... nothing like a night's sleep..... spent all night getting fustrated not being able to get it to work... went to bed and woke up this morning.. brought it to work... followed instructions again... and what do you know... it worked... go figure... used a 500meg toshiba laptop hdd... model MK2428FC 05-19-2000 06:39:26

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) klpauba When I got to the BIOS screen, I didn't have the hard disk connected so I thought, hey, power this thing down and attach the drive. I figured that I'd get back to the BIOS screen as easy as I did before. Well, after doing that, the IOpener screen is dark and I'm unable to revive it. I tried removing the battery thinking this might clear the BIOS settings to no avail. When I apply power and press the "power" button, the keyboard lights flash briefly but that's it. Anyone have any ideas on how to get the BIOS setup screen back? 05-20-2000 16:38:46

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Tadpole A quick note about removing the security torx screws - you don't need any special Torx drivers. Use a 5/64-inch jeweler's flat-bladed screwdriver (a 1/16-inch will work, but not as reliably) instead. Slide the blade of the screwdriver down next to the post in the center of the screw, putting the edges of the blade into two of the torx "stars." You'll be able to turn the screws easily. Alright, so it's not much of a hardware hack... 05-21-2000 00:53:21

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) justme Profile Hi, Ok, I'm new to this, got my I-Opener ordered March 21 today (May 22) from CC, I opened the back, put in a MS keyboard to replace the I-Opener keyboard, hold esc/alt/cntl and still get a voice over during start up, no bios. Forgive my ignorance, but what did I miss here, I haven't yet opened the back, and haven't put in a hard drive, but thought I'd at least take a look at the BIOS setup, my unit has a female voice if that helps. Thanks 05-22-2000 01:14:18

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Opus33 FYI To follow up on the Torx screws, once you get them out, you really don't want to go through that hassle again, so, unless you find some screws that will fit in their place (I couldn't), take the Torx screws and use a Dremmel cutting disc to make flat-head style notches in each one so you can now open and close the case with a flat-head. 05-22-2000 07:38:18

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) peteboogie Ok, I have a question but first, here's my setup: I received my IO on 05-May-2000, so I believe it is a v3. I picked up a 6gig Toshiba 2.5" drive and the IMOD2 kit. I used dolly to write the qnx image to the Toshiba hd, changed my IO's bios settings and succesfully booted qnx off the hd. I'm about to continue with down-flashing the IO bios to v1, but first I have a question. I'd like to get win98 running on this machine. Can anyone tell me exactly why the v3 bios won't boot win98 off the hard drive and why the v1 bios will? (I'll continue with the "V3 Flash EZ Play by Play" and when I'm done I'll post the details of my setup.) 05-22-2000 11:16:59

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) jmh3 peteboogie: i believe the bios (v3) will only boot disks with the paramaters (cyls/heads/sectors) of the sandisk. thats why people are puting the image of an old drive on the harddrive. then they can boot up with an image of the old drive, get a command prompt, login to internet, download flash/bios, and flash the bios to v1. after flashing the bios to version 1 you should be able to install windows 98 using the full capacity of the drive and boot it in the iopener. if you formatted drive (to the specs of the original sandisk) and installed win98 (on the 16 meg partition) and an award flash utility then you could probably do the biosflashing in the win98 command line instead of the qnx. john 05-22-2000 11:52:50

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) CheapBrew jutsme, getting to the BIOS for me was a bit of a pain. Using a generic ps/2 keyboard, I had to bang the heck out of the escape key (holding ctrl-alt) repeatedly for a good 10 seconds sometimes before the BIOS came up. Maybe I just had a crummy keyboard - I have to do this to get to the BIOS now even after I've hacked it. Now I'm using a wireless keyboard (the "airboard"), so its even trickier. One thing I've noticed: For some reason, it is easier for me to get to the BIOS after a "cold" start, rather than a "warm" start. I power the iOpener down by holding the power button down for about 5 seconds, then power it back up. Maybe just luck, but I always have better luck bringing up the BIOS screen this way. Hope it helps! 05-22-2000 23:57:33

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Treavor I'm not bragging, I am posting my success in the hope it helps someone. I got my v3 (new boot logo, female voice in intro). It is now running Red Hat 6.2. I followed the original post in this thread with the following exceptions: 1. Open I-Opener - used a jewelers screw driver. Netpl's effort of the torx screws added about 10 seconds - give it up guys ! 2. Made my own IDE cable by soldering point to point on salvaged laptop drive connectors. 3. Downloaded v2 "pre-fab" QNX image and gunziped it. 4. Load QNX image on HD - I used an (otherwise uselless) old drive out of a dead Compaq Laptop. It is a Connor, I did not even look at the type or capacity. I hooked it up to my Sony laptop via a SMC PCMCIA to IDE interface card - it appeared as /dev/hdc (no need to set slave jumpers), so I followed the original post exactly. 5. Hooked drive to I-O. NOTE NOTE NOTE: I had to set *BOTH* drive C and D to "490,2,65535,489,32,NORMAL". This was covered here in another thread (Thank the deities I found that post!). If you are getting the boot fail message, this may be your problem. 6. Checked that the BIOS image and qnxflash program were there. Many thanks to those that put together that image -- I owe you. 7. Took the leap of faith and flashed the bios. There's no turnning back here! 8. Rebooted, and got the old BIOS screen, and I knew I was in. 9. Using another Laptop (an old Thinkpad), and another Laptop HD (a nice thin 1.3G Toshiba), I made a bootable RH 6.2 installation. 10. Installed the RH HD in the I-O, and reset the BIOS for that drive (auto detect worked). Linux booted and Red Hat's Kudzu program found the differences between the I-O and the ThinkPad - kudos to Kudzu - it even configured the CyberBlade video, but I had to tweek the settings to get X working properly, but that is beyond the scope of this thread. 11. Sound is not working, and I have not done the mechanical part of the hack yet. Anybody have a URL where I can D/L some TIME !!? Hope this helps. 05-23-2000 09:13:06

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Justin Pope Profile A good reminder for people is to try both geometry methods; that is, try setting pri and slave both to 490/2/32/65535/489/Normal, and if that doesn't work, try setting primary to none and just the slave to the above geometry. Remember to jumper the harddrive as the primary, and don't mess with the sandisk. For me, it wouldn't work when setting both disks in the bios, but as soon as I set primary to none, it booted the drive fine. 05-23-2000 10:22:41

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) justme Profile Hi, First, CheapBrew, thanks, repetedly hitting ctl-alt-esc did the trick, before I was just holding it down (do I feel dumb). Thanks very much. Second, to Treavor, on using non-torx, I tried, and stripped one nut, Sears sells size 7 torx screwdrivers for $2.99, it's dirt cheap and much easier than using a hacksaw (which I had to do on the one stripped nut). I applaud your ability to get it done without a torx, however hacksawing a stripped nut is a pain I'd hoped to avoid. Others may wish to invest a couple of bucks in a properly fitting driver 8 Toes, thank you very much for your great step by step (though as before I suggest the Sears size 7 Torx for $2.99 vs the $24.50 for a set from digikey). I have got my case opened, and I appears I have a version 3+ motherboard (winchip 200, female voice, torx screws) and would of course like to flash back to another version. Question, if I yank up an old IDE hard drive can I attach it directly to the I-Opener, or do I need custom/modified cables to do this (I'm talking here about a regular 3.5" hard drive of the vanilla type many have in their current PC). Secondly, shortly (after flashing) I'd anticipate wanting to run an internal drive, any suggestions for great drives, and any suggestions as to how I can get a 2.5" laptop drive to run off my PC for initial configuration (I do not have a laptop). I'm leaning toward buying the kit advertised here, but wish to understand what else I may need and when I may need it, my immediate goal for example is to first flash down the bios/qnx then try to boot W2K, W98 or Linux off a regular HD, finally move whatever feels comfortable to a 2.5" internal drive. I just wish to be sure not to damage anything, I don't for example want to connect up my IDE hard drive to the IDE connector on the I-Opener and discover there is a major wiring problem. Thanks 05-23-2000 23:59:12

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Zogg Well, 8-Toes method worked perfectly for me. I thought I'd save time and do some of the other tricks mentioned here (setting drive parameters on machine you Dolly disk with, setting BOTH drives to same parameters in I-Opener bios) but all it did was cost me time. Once I followed 8-Toes exact steps it worked like a champ. THANK YOU!!! BTW I used a Fujitsu MHD2021AT 2.1 GB laptop drive. Set the drive settings to AUTO on the Dolly machine. Also, running "./app/stop-apps" killed my terminal window too, and since we don't know the new root password, you have to restart the box and start all over. So DON'T try to stop the demo, just run QNXFLASH anyway. justme: There are adapters to let you connect a 2.5" drive to a 3.5" cable, but I have never run across the reverse. So get a laptop drive, connect it to a PC to put whatever you want on it, then use that on the I-Opener. 05-24-2000 07:58:00

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Linuxguru No, the Dollied image on the disk is that of a V2 I-Opener. So after you kill the apps with /app/stop-apps, just login as root with password osiw$6.4 as before, and continue the flash process. This is intrinsically safer than having a bunch of apps in the background while the flash is going on. A single missed interrupt (say, audio) may hose your flash. -Linuxguru 05-24-2000 12:14:30

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Pfunk Profile I'm sorry folks, but my brain is melting. I need *more* clarification on the hard drive settings. Specifically, the jumpering required to use 8-Toes method. Should I be setting my drive to be primary, then telling the BIOS to boot from D,A,SCSI. This seems contridictary to me. Here's why I ask: I've got a small 250MB toshiba drive connected (already DD'ed). I've set the BIOS C/H/S and boot order to D,A,SCSI. But the only way that I can keep the dreaded "boot disk failure" message from coming up, is by setting the drive to be Master. But, when I do that, it get's past the BIOS screen and then switches to a white screen with vertical lines on it. (perhaps this is a DD problem). However I can't see/hear anything while it's in this state. Anyone have any ideas? 05-24-2000 20:51:45

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Tadpole I just finished flashing my V3 i-Opener (sounds kinky...). The secret trick for me was to change the i-Opener's BIOS HD settings to Primary:NONE, and Secondary:490/2/32/Normal. (somebody else mentioned that in another thread, I just thought I'd add it here as well). Setting Primary to the 490/2/32 settings resulted in the "Drive Failure" message. 05-24-2000 21:24:43

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) archmage I'm having a little trouble getting to the QNX root prompt... I've tried using TAB+444 and ESC+444 both times right after the i-opener logo disappears and the screen changes color and a large pointer appears. I"m running on what I believe is a v3 i-opener... Torc security screws, female voice, gooped BIOS... I think the demo finished one time, so is that changing anything? Is there a different key combo for the v3s? I've read through lots of posts and it looks like it's working fine for everyone else, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong... Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks for anything you've got! 05-24-2000 22:51:40

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) aha! You don't have to unscrew the case or replace the hard drive to get control of your V3 I Opener! Here is what I found out: 1) After booting V2 OS, but before starting the GUI, it also says "shadow file does not exist, you may not be able to login" the same as V3 OS. This message may show up in either the primary or secondary terminal (ctrl alt enter to see other). Conclusion: NetPliance never did ship /etc/shadow as part of the root filesystem image in /os/root.fs 2) Examining /rc/startup in V2 OS shows that it creates /etc/shadow from scratch with the root password we know for V2, hardcoded into that script. It can be overridden by the .rootPassword attribute in the "NVRAM" partition (type 98 decimal, at sectors 10112 through 10175) which has null-terminated plaintext strings. Hex editing the image of V2 OS shows that this attribute does not exist. 3) After booting V2 OS from hard drive with drive configured as primary master w/o slave present, QNX sees both hard drive (as /dev/hd0) and sandisk (as /dev/hd1). No partitions show up for hd1. It is a simple matter to copy V3 OS sandisk on top of the first 16M of hard disk, then pull the drive, then transfer to PC. 4) V3 does have the .rootPassword attribute, with value "VX62xvj2UVhK}" at byte offset 9619 through 9632 of that partition. This decrypts to "D4XwzoIQ". 5) You can always power off the IO without disconnecting the power cord. Hold down the power button for more then 5 seconds. This is just like a desktop PC with the power buttone set for "soft off". Pressing power button briefly on IO shuts off the screen only, but you think the machine is off, since the sandisk is silent and it has no fans. It is painfully obvious it isn't off when the woman's voice in the nondemo continues with the screen off. 6) While OS is booting, the power LED will blink off briefly when it will accept a console login. You have about 10 seconds until the GUI starts and you have to power-cycle to try again. Press any key to get the "login:" prompt. user ID is "root" and password is as above. Quickly type "/app/stop-apps" and the female voice and useless nondemo won't happen, and you will be logged in as root. 7) Perusing /rc/startup and the /app/start-apps* family of scripts in V3 OS shows no obvious fooling around with /etc/shadow like V2 OS did. Maybe it is in some other script, or maybe it is in one of the many binaries. But /etc/shadow was definitely created from the .rootPassword attribute, since login worked! 8) But what is the exact sequence of steps to run QNX with a regular ISP, and avoid phone-home, and use the web browser and emailer that come with it? I think it insists on dialing before doing anything else... 05-25-2000 00:57:55

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) archmage I just tried this most recently recommended method. Hitting any key to see the post information when the power LED blinks to get a login prompt is really cool! Unfortunately, that root password didn't work for me... I've allowed my system to dial in a few times, because I heard that was a good idea with the V3s... Supposedly it allowed the /etc/shadows to be regenerated. But I guess maybe not... At any rate, should the D4XwzoIQ password work for any system, or is that dependent on your system? Any more ideas? Things you want me to check on my system for more info? 05-25-2000 02:20:22

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) aha! archmage sez: >Unfortunately, that root password didn't work for me... I've allowed my system to >dial in a few times, because I heard that was a good idea with the V3s... Supposedly >it allowed the /etc/shadows to be regenerated. But I guess maybe not... uh oh... >At any rate, should the D4XwzoIQ password work for any system, or is that dependent >on your system? No idea, maybe just mine, maybe any until it dials in. All the demo units in Circuit City and CompUSA have the old BIOS and demo OS. At this point you must disassemble your unit and use a hard drive to regain control. 05-25-2000 21:10:48

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Shazam Ok, help me figure THIS one out. I made my boot drive just fine, plug it into the IOpener and the POWER light comes on. System doesn't boot though. If I disconnect the drive, the power light goes out. I CAN power down by holding down the power button for a few seconds, but the system will NOT post with a drive plugged in. Could there be a rework on the board that makes it not boot with a drive plugged in? I have a v3 IOpener. 05-25-2000 22:14:07

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) no-nick Tried the D4XwzoIQ trick. Didn't work. I have V3 iopener (Winchip, 2-sides gooped, IDE header, can't tell the screen so I guess that means Sharp, female voice). Never phoned home. Never completed the tutorial. Note, when I get the login prompt after the npinit message, I usually had three prompts, with the first two saying the "no shadow file...." message. Putting root at the third prompt then D4XwzoIQ for password didn't work. Oh well. Still waiting for my cable. 05-25-2000 22:45:20

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) i-bill shazam, make sure you've got your drive plugged in the right way. May need to reverse the cable...? 05-26-2000 10:55:08

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Shazam Cable plugged in wrong was my FIRST thought. I tried it both ways. 05-26-2000 14:36:06

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) asterix Hi folks, I had problems programming my V3 BIOS when following the above described steps. "qnxflash" would report an error and abort. I went to the http://openflash.sourceforge.net website and found an useful hint in one of the postings: " ...I initially checked the ID (-i) fine, read the current BIOS (-r rip) fine, verified my read (-v rip) fine ..." I run qnxflash [BTW .. for users not familiar with UNIX environment: You actually have to type "./qnxflash" or .... set the PATH variable ] with the above options .. and repeated the write command. And .. voila ... it worked like a breeze. I am not quite sure if reading the flash before writing to it really solves the problem, but it worked for me. 05-27-2000 17:37:11

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) smogbound asterix: What was the error message exactly ? Reading the chip first shouldn't make any difference at all. There were some problems with the device ID and V4 (RISE CPU) Iopeners that I just fixed. If you're in the mood you might try 1.02 and see if it works better for you or not. 05-28-2000 12:06:35

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) FunHack I have V3 IO (Female voice) and tried Linux dd described first in this thread. I used 2 IBM Laptop disks: DPRA-21215 (1.2GB, obtained from compugeek) DBOA-2540 (540MB, salvaged from IBM/TP230Cs) Checked jamper at: http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/dboa/dboajum.htm and http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/dpra/dprajum.htm So no jamper was used to set as slave (aka. /dev/hdb) I am not successful to get QNX booted from HDD. does anyone used these to boot QNX from HDD? (I removed most goo, but it is deep into socket. Not yet removed BIOS from socket.) Some comment suggested to use older HDD (<100MB). Does anyone know how to obtain such? 05-28-2000 21:54:15

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) asterix smogbound: As it looked from the screen messages QNXFLASH tried to delete the flash first and then confirm the deletion by checking for 00. The compare failed (error message) and hence QNXFLASH aborted. 05-30-2000 13:42:11

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) smogbound asterix: Thanks for the info. That sounds like the same problem as the V4 Iopeners had (hopefully fixed in version 1.02). Are you sure you have a V3 (Winchip CPU) and not a V4 (RISE CPU)? 05-30-2000 16:31:00

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) archmage Hey cyrixone... I've got basically the same setup as you do. I've got a 2.5->3.5 converter (or 3.5->2.5 depending on your perspective), at any rate... 44pin female, 40pin male. I made a crossedover 40 pin cable, and am trying to use that to hook up an external 590MB drive (which has been set to the 490/2/32 settings). I'm encouraged taht you got it working with this kind of setup, but I'm still getting Hard Disk Failure errors on startup. I've tried it with the settings in both Master and Slave areas of the BIOS and in only the Slave area. I haven't tried flipping the cable around... Which way do you all mean by that? As far as I can tell, pin 1 of the 44pin female adapter side goes to pin 2 of the 40pin ribbon cable that goes into the drive. (I checked about a third of the conncetions)... And that leaves pins 41-44 going to nothing... That's ok, right? I know i'm close, maybe just not close enough... argh!!! 06-01-2000 14:23:43

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) asterix smogbound: Yikes ... you are right. It is a RISE CPU .. so I guess I have version V4. 06-02-2000 09:12:35

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Qoder Does anyone know root password for V4 (RISE CPU)? 06-02-2000 09:56:55

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Naan Just wanted to thank everyone who put the time and doc together to get the V3 I-opener hack information out. After a brief bout of not fully reading the instructions, I got my drive in and new OS loaded last night. Gonna get it up on the network this weekend. Thanks again all. 06-02-2000 14:30:10

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) justme Hi, The information in the V3 flash thread is great, anyone reading this post should have read that thread first. Second, in my experience no single post in this thread solved completely all the problems I encountered, however mixing and following the evolution of the thread did the trick. Cumulatively this IS the thread to get a V3 working This post is feedback on what worked and what problems were encountered, it's intended to help supplement other posts here. In my case I ordered a $39 +$8 S&h 1.3GB laptop drive from CompuGeek... really not a bad deal. I downloaded Dolly, had a copy of the I-Opener image disk, which was unzipped. First problem, I run W2K usually exclusively, definately Dolly is a W98 DOS mode program If you are a W2K person with NTFS hard drives, this presents a problem, solution was to dig up an old IDE hard drive with W98 on it. Second, Dolly disagreed with my autodetected sector count. That is the number of sectors in the BIN file was more than Dolly wanted to copy to the hard drive. The solution was to set the detection type to normal from auto (why this works is unknown to me), but it did. Thus on the non I-Opener PC, setting all CHS information AND setting normal resulted in Dolly happily setting up the drive. The initial post in this thread, indicates setting the BIOS to 490,2,65535,489,32,NORMAL on the I-Opener, I'd suggest an identical setup on the PC creating the DOLLY copy (note the NORMAL, it IS imporatnt in my experience). Partition Magic (4.0) showed 4 partitions on the DOLLIED drive, after successful copy. Great, ok so now my hard drive is formatted, and I go to the I-Opener... try to boot, set to boot D, and it fails... at first tried changing the master/slave setting on the hard drive, tried C and D, didn't work. What did work was turning C off, manually configuring D and booting with C only (I am not certain if this is the only solution, but it worked for me, your milage may vary). I am uncertain, but it appeared to me the C only was required, I could have tried more but didn't, I did try various settings and on failure would load factory defaults. If stuck, I'd suggest loading factory defaults, then configuring the BIOS settings as per the above. Hearing the "male" voice was great, the laptop harddrive made just enough noise for me to know without any doubt that the "voice" was coming from it and not some darned sandisk. I knew on hearing it, flashing wouldn't be far behind. Which brings me to the flash... there is a post about the need to put a ./ in front of the flash command line... it's true... and on doing that it worked. Once flashed, a new set of problems became evident... which I'm starting another thread about (relating to trying to get W2K up and running). It's great to have this board, I hope this post helps anyone still stuck. 06-05-2000 01:19:32

Setting Up the HDD in the BIOS (modified 0 times) KneuB+OnDblk Sorry for bringing this thread back to the top but I could use some help with setting up the HDD. First off I'll admit I'm a fledgling newbe and my progress so far is none to great. It's taken me over two week to figure out that I had to jumper one of the hot pins (41 & 42) to the cable select pin (28) before it would function as a slave (no slave jumper). And for the last several nights I've been fighting with the BIOS attempting to set the C.H.& S. to the 490.2.32 parameters so I can run dolly to make the V2 transfer. I'm using the delete key to boot an e-machine into the BIOS setup screen. Once there I can see the C.H.& S. parameters but can't change them. Now this is my first ever attemp to do anything in the BIOS so I suspect that I've missed something really fundamental in my searches and studies on this. I'm a bit at a loss here and any pointers to get me headed in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Frustrated In Seattle 06-22-2000 23:23:49

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* DOLLY will take care of the C/H/S for You. 06-22-2000 23:45:24

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Jopasm I'm trying to "downgrade" a V4 iopener using the iop_v2_sandisk_dump file. I'm using dd to write the file to the disk following the directions above - I've tried setting the CHS in fdisk and using "linux hdc=490,2,32" at the lilo prompt. I can not boot from the drive that has been imaged, and the iopener will boot from it either - it gives an error message "Cannot find /dev/hd0t077" or something similar - it just keeps scrolling the same message. Any suggestions? 06-24-2000 21:30:30

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* in the First Post of this Thread Step 3 You are looking for the File "v2_image_with_qnxflash102.gz" You will Find it ! Read about & use DOLLY When you hear the Male Voice, instead of the Woman's voice, you will be running off of the Hard Drive. FLASH your Bios @ this Point, Now you should be able to Boot any OS from a Hard Drive. * StarFish * 06-24-2000 21:53:22

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Jopasm I've tried Dolly - it would not work (yes, I had it setup in BIOS for 490,2,32 - yes, I had the drive as slave on the primary controller). I've tried both images - same problem w/ both of them. 06-24-2000 21:58:35

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Jopasm A little more information: I'm using a WD Caviar 170meg HD. I've tried Dolly on two systems. If I let the BIOS autodetect the hard drive Dolly will appear to work, but the drive will not boot on the Iopener. If I set the BIOS to 490/2/32 Dolly will not work (complains about the number of sectors). Using DD w/ either image the drive will not boot on a PC; on the Iopener it gives the error message from my earlier message. 06-24-2000 22:15:45

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Following the Directions of this Thread: I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) V3 BIOS flash step by step http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=verytech&Post=86&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session= in the middle of Step 4 Does Your FDISK Report what is Listed there ??? * StarFish * 06-24-2000 22:36:30

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Jopasm That's what I'm getting w/ DOS FDISK. It just will not boot. I've tried 2 different drives and several different settings (just about every combination I can think of). Grrr. Thanks for the help, but I've tried to be very careful about following the directions given. One interesting thing (which I think somebody else has already reported) is that fdisk under linux gives the partitions in reverse order from DOS fdisk (at least on my system). 06-24-2000 22:56:21

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Jopasm Well - an addendum to the previous post: FDISK is showing 13%,-%,13%,64% - I did delete the paritions before I re-imaged the drive. 06-24-2000 23:06:10

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Well I think You have found your problem. it's not that your hard drive wouldn't work, @ least, We don't know that Yet ! I used DOS FDISK to Delete NON DOS PARTITIONS ( DELETE ALL PARTITIONS ) Then DOLLY from DOS Good Luck, * StarFish * 06-24-2000 23:44:59

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) D2tw4all Well folks, you don't HAVE to use an older hard drive, I was able to get this going with a 1.6 gig IBM laptop drive, worked like a charm. Use DOLLY, that's all I have to say, it made life really easy. I used an old ibm laptop with a floppy drive and a zip drive with the zip drivers on a boot floppy, took a while but was able to set the whole thing up using the zip drive and the hard drive in the laptop, then just moved it over to the iopener and it booted like a champ. Good luck all. D2. 06-27-2000 07:53:27

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Phillerup How are you connecting these laptop hard drives to pc's? 06-27-2000 11:21:33

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) D2tw4all There is an adapter to attach a 2.5" notebook hdd to a 3.5" connecter, however I used another laptop and a zip drive to get the thing going. The drive converters aren't very expensive and have the 2.5 inch connecter on one side, and the 3.5 inch connecter and a power connecter on the other, work really well too. Either way you can get data on and off the laptop hard drive. Good luck. D2. 06-27-2000 12:26:29

How did I hose it this time (modified 0 times) KneuB+OnDblk I finally got Dolly to clone the V2image (I think) but there seems to be a few things a miss here. The BIOS shows C/H/S as 4200/16/63 and fdisk shows 12 1% 4 % 4 % 4 % This does not look right to me. The process I used was 1) used fdisk to delete all partitions. 2) used Dolly c:\V2dump HD129: /c to make the image transfer. That is where I stand at the present. I still have not figured out how to put the QNXflash and V1 Bios onto the HD. I remember having read that in one of these threads but I still have not relocated it. I'll keep searching for that one, but in the mean time what am I doing wrong that I can't get c/h/s to the 490/2/32 ? P.S. If you happen to know what thread explained how to put the QNXflash and V1 BIOS on the HD along with the sandisk image I would really appreciate a few more pointers here. Frustrated in Seattle 06-29-2000 23:56:05

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Other Thread is I-OpenerTechnical Info Reference / V3 BIOS flash step by step http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=verytech&Post=86&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session= Don't use "/C" with Dolly ??? 06-30-2000 00:14:56

C/H/S doesn't jive (modified 0 times) KneuB+OnDblk OK... I deleted the partitions with fdisk and ran dolly c:\sandisk.img hd129: no /c at the end. the C/H/S still show up in the BIOS as 4200 / 16 / 63 but the partitions show up in fdisk as 2 % 2 % % 10 % Its getting closer but it still doesn't look right, based on the prior posts. I can't change the C/H/S in the BIOS as that is not a changeable field in my BIOS (at least I haven't been able to find a way to do it). Any suggestions? Determined, but Stumped. 06-30-2000 21:55:49

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Do You have a Modified Cable to try the HardDrive in the IOpener ? Could be worth a Try. See if BIOS can Auto Detect the HardDrive. Dolly might have the Size right, It might be an issue with your Emachine not showing it ???? anyhow, if things go right, it will look about the same ? But you will have a Man's Voice, instead of a Womans. 06-30-2000 22:45:27

Disk Boot Failure (modified 0 times) kneuB+OnDblk SF I tried it. The HD spins and the i-Opener comes up "Disk Boot Failure". I seem to remember having read something about that in here someplace. I'll go back and read it all again and let you know how I fare. In the mean time suggestions are always welcome. Out of curiosity, is there another way to set the C/H/S other than through the BIOS? Someother software program that I could try? 07-02-2000 22:18:44

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* There is Auto Detect Hard Drive in BIOS It should Work, if your hard drive will ? I want you to Find that & see what it says. play with your boot order in BIOS if it doesn't work. Good Luck *SF* 07-02-2000 22:49:13

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) D2tw4all I didn't even fdisk when I did it, and I didn't specify the drive settings in the host machine either, I just let it autodetect, ran dolly with the proper switches as described above to dump the image, then put the drive in the io, set the bios on the io as described above, and booted right up. My IO is a V3. In any case, the image file you are using should already have the qnxflash and bin file on it, at least that's the one I have. Good luck. D2. 07-05-2000 05:53:38

I DID IT !!!! (I think?) (modified 0 times) KneuB+OnDblk Thank you SF & D2tw4all. I think it worked, I'm not sure yet but I think it did. I got into the BIOS and changed the settings and then rebooted, verified the existance of the qnxflash....etc. and executed the flash. The "MALE" voice halted for a few seconds when I executed the flash routine. I assume that means the processor was to busy for him to talk (a good sign I hope). I then tried to verify which version of the bios I now have by booting up with Ctrl-Alt-Esc .... but I can't get back into the bios window. It's not supposed to do that, is it? 07-05-2000 14:41:48

Oops .... (modified 0 times) KneuB OnDblk Sorry, I panicked. I got back in and of course there is no BIOS version info there...oops. So I tried booting with the F4 key (7 times so far) so I could watch the boot screen, no good. So where do I find that info? 07-05-2000 14:53:35

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Mary Many thanks to 8-toes for his description of what to do. I think I am almost there!! However, I would like some advice. Per 8-toes et al, I have managed to get my I-opener running V2 from an IBM travelstar 6.49 gb HD. As described, I have used TAB 4444 to get to the # prompt, and I have managed to type in cd app/ztest, and to type in ls -al. My problem is that, as I am doing this, the V2 demo is still running in the backround, and, by the time it's all typed in, the command window disapears, and the screen goes to the next part of the demo. Because the command window is closed, I can't type in qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin, and thus I can't flash the bios. I have tried typing in ./app/stop-apps just after getting to the # prompt. This has stopped the demo, and put me at a login screen. I have tried to login using login = root and password = OSiw$6.4, and can't login. Does anyone know if (1) there is a way to keep the commmand window open long enough to flash the bios or (2) if there is a way to login at the login screen I get when I type in ./app/stop-apps? Thank you (and many thanks to whoever wrote qnxflash!) 07-06-2000 14:36:19

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) UPSGuy Many thanks to 8-toes for his description of what to do. I think I am almost there!! However, I would like some advice. Per 8-toes et al, I have managed to get my I-opener running V2 from an IBM travelstar 6.49 gb HD. As described, I have used TAB 4444 to get to the # prompt, and I have managed to type in cd app/ztest, and to type in ls -al. My problem is that, as I am doing this, the V2 demo is still running in the backround, and, by the time it's all typed in, the command window disapears, and the screen goes to the next part of the demo. Because the command window is closed, I can't type in qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin, and thus I can't flash the bios. Easy enough to fix. Hit Tab 4444 again. The window will pop back up. I have tried typing in ./app/stop-apps just after getting to the # prompt. This has stopped the demo, and put me at a login screen. I have tried to login using login = root and password = OSiw$6.4, and can't login. You don't really have to do that using the v2 image on HDD method. It's already been done. Instead of typing '/app/stop-apps', type in "cd app/ztest". Then pick up from #14, and continue on. 14. Enter the command "ls -al" to check to see if the files are all there. You should see: qnxflash, and the bios_image_256k.bin and some others. 15. Start the flashing with the command: "./qnxflash -w bios_image_256k.bin" Have fun. [/Quote] 07-06-2000 14:50:41

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Linuxguru Mary: The password for root is osiw$6.4 (the case is important) on the V2 QNX image. This should allow you to log in after stopping the tutorial with /app/stop-apps. 07-06-2000 15:23:19

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Mary My thanks to Linuxguru and UPS Guy for your help. I was able to get the hard drive recognized and got nothing but net! I have another question for anyone out there. If one were to hypothetically want to make a bootable disk of windows 98 for the i-opener how would one go about doing it. Any input would be greatly appreciated!!!!! Mary 07-06-2000 22:34:19

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Mary My thanks to Linuxguru and UPS Guy for your help. I was able to get the hard drive recognized and got nothing but net! I have another question for anyone out there. If one were to hypothetically want to make a bootable disk of windows 98 for the i-opener how would one go about doing it. Any input would be greatly appreciated!!!!! Mary 07-06-2000 22:35:14

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) parasyght i have been fallowing this thread for some time, and many other, but i havnt encountered anyone saying that the partitions % in fdisk come up correct and 490/2/32 is reported in the bios. Once i connect the drive to io and let it auto detect, it reads: 5megs 170=cyl 2=heads 32=sectors. i also get a boot disk fail message. What to do??? 07-06-2000 23:45:14

:-) NOTHING BUT NET :-) (modified 0 times) kneuB+OnDblk I've got "NOTHING BUT NET"!!!!!! YeeeHaaawwww. Thank you 8-Toes, SF, D2, Roastbeef....one and all .... thank you. . . . OK I've calmed down now, sort of, and I apologize for having gotten overly excited. This has been far more of a learning curve than I had expected, but I'm having fun. Thank you again. Now it is off to another thread to learn Linux. BTW For any other NewBees that are trying to figure out where the BIOS version and date are shown; hold down the tab key during boot. The version is on the top of the screen and the date is in the lower left corner. 07-06-2000 23:49:29

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Do Your partitions show up in DOS fdisk as 2 Mbytes 2 % 2 Mbytes 2 % 0 Mbytes 0 % 10 Mbytes 12 % If so, I guess You have a Cable problem ? *SF* 07-06-2000 23:55:25

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) UPSGuy I have another question for anyone out there. If one were to hypothetically want to make a bootable disk of windows 98 for the i-opener how would one go about doing it. That really depends on which medium you want to create this bootable disk, the Sandisk, or your hard drive. If you want to use your hard drive, get a 2.5 <-> 3.5 adapter and hook the hard drive up to your desktop. Set the hard drive to active in fdisk either by using partition magic or a similar program, or a bootable floppy with fdisk copied over, with your hard drive set up as C:. Then re-connect your drives, if you connected the hard drive as C:, and sys the drive. If you're going for an OS install, just dump the cd to a directory on your hard drive. Should you want to set up the Sandisk as a bootable disk using 98, you can visit http://www.geocities.com/iopener_hack/ There is a tutorial there on converting the Sandisk to a backup boot disk. 07-07-2000 01:15:39

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) FreezerBurn Thanks all! I got all three V3 I-Openers of mine up and running with the info on this thread. Now on to the advanced mods. FreezerBurn 07-08-2000 05:36:03

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) albert Profile SF, you said: "Do Your partitions show up in DOS fdisk as 2 Mbytes 2 % 2 Mbytes 2 % 0 Mbytes 0 % 10 Mbytes 12 %" If you think about it, if 2MB is 2% of something, it's a 1GB drive. Does this mean it'll only work in a 1GB drive? I configured my drive geometry in the BIOS of the PC that I Dolly'd it from to be 490, etc (15MB). Under this BIOS configuration, the partitions show up as: 2MB 13% 2MB 13% 0MB 0% 10MB 67% Which is what the percentages should be on a 15MB drive! So I'm a little confused that you rely on those percentages. I'm getting "DISK BOOT FAILURE" with 2 different drives so I'm curious if this is any symptom. 07-08-2000 19:49:33

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Delete ALL Partitions with FDISK & try again. I don't know about the math ? But it Works. Good Luck, * StarFish * 07-09-2000 07:26:12

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) canekid@yahoo.com I just got done pulling out my hair. I know have a nicely flashed IOpener V3. What was my problem? """"Cannot find /dev/hd0t077"""" Oh sure I had my share of other errors too, but no one realy talked about this one, accept one, Jopasm and now ME The problem is USER Error with Dolly. You must type "DOLLY IMAGEFILE HD###:" I renamed the image file to "image" because I was doing this for so hella long. My HD### was HD129, Primary Slave. You MUST MUST MUST put the ":" at the end of HDXXX this was were I was failing. If you don't put the ":" then Dolly makes a file name on your Primary Master disk, called HD129.. Silly I missed this for a long time. Check your hard drive for this file. If it's there you have been using Dolly wrong. This Section stollen from CyrixOne, and Modified by ME to show the steps I took for success: 1. Download the QNX image and DOLLY. If you don't already have QNXFLASH and the old BIOS, get that too. 2. Connect the hard drive you plan to use to your computer PRIMARY SLAVE (Careful about drive incompatablities, I lost some data doing this on my first try) 3. Boot up your computer and go into the BIOS settings. Set Primary SLAVE as 490 cylinders, 2 heads, 32 sectors. Change the translation to NORMAL 3.5. Booting from MSDOS 6.22 worked for me, Win98 Safemode Command Prompt did not work. (I had a spare drive for this) Dolly would not see any hard drive, unless I was in MSDOS 6.22 (Was a pain in the butt) 4. Run the command "dolly [filename] hd129:" (Don't forget the colen.) 4.5. I checked with FDISK after a reboot. Definately 4 Partitions 2,2,0,10 5. Shut down your computer, and disconnect the drive. Connect it to the I-Opener. (set drive jumper to master) 6. Go into the BIOS setup and set slave drive to 490,2,32 - normal translation. 7. Go into "Bios Feature Setup" and change boot order to D, A, SCSI. 8. Reboot you've got QNX running from the hard drive! And so it worked for me after three days of messing around with it. When the "Guy" was talking about the keyboard... I TAB-4444 and a window came up with # I followed 8-Toes directions and it all worked. I am so happy now. Chris 07-10-2000 01:01:52

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) garfield houstin, we've gota problem... i downloaded dolly, v2_q102.dat i used dolly v2_q102.dat hd129: it copied ok, but when i try to boot the io, i get "npinit: Still waiting for access to path /dev/hd0t77" and it sits there. any ideas? 07-10-2000 10:12:21

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) garfield houstin we've got a problem... i have a WD170, IO v4, 3 connector cable, dolly, v2_q102.dat - i have set my bios to the 490, 2, ... 32, normal (slave), - none,none (master) but when i boot the io gives me "waiting to access /dev/hd0t77" what's this about? thx 07-10-2000 10:57:11

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* & your boot order is ? 07-10-2000 12:05:34

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Dogger Another dumb question... I have a V4 (3/28 BIOS, 266 MHz CPU, all IDE pins, no goo). I have a comercial reverser cable and have tried two HD's (an old Areal and a Seagate). Both drives are recognized by the BIOS under auto-detect but neither drive spins up during the boot process. If I Tab after the KB flash, I can see the BIOS status but it just hangs. I thought I remembered seeing a post about issues with newer IOs but a searched with no results. Any ideas or should I get ready to give Badflash some money? 07-10-2000 19:23:49

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Why do I feel the Need to ask if You have FLASHed the BIOS Yet ? You know You have to ??? (did You read & understand the First Post in this Thread ?) 07-10-2000 19:27:44

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Dogger OK, SmartAss... Exactly how the $#$@%$@ am I supposed to flash the &*%#@! BIOS if the !@#$#$#%! HD doesn't spin up? I dd'd V2 QNX (w QNXFlash and V1 Bios) to both HDs. I thought the original problem might have been the HD, hence the 2nd HD. I am NOT try to boot any OS other than the V2 QNX so I CAN flash the BIOS. My problem is that neither of the HDs I tried even spin up although they are detected by the BIOS under Autodetect. I've tried just about every combination of BIOS settings I can think of including geometry, boot order, and PIO mode. 07-10-2000 19:45:23

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) *SF* Yea, I knew that ! (Not) Next thing I would check is the 5VDC @ the Hard Drive. Some have Reported a Voltage Drop here for some reason ? another idea? is to try any Drive You can get hooked up. (external Power Supply for 3 1/2" Drives, & watch were & what adaptor you try to use. some have pins shorted.) I made my own Cables so I didn't have this Problem either. As Far as being a SmartAss, I/m Not the One with the Problem ! Maybe someone else can Help You ? Good Luck, * StarFish * 07-10-2000 20:01:39

RE:V3 Flash EZ Play by Play (modified 0 times) Dogger Thx for the advise....I'll see what the trusty DMM says tomorrow. I'm not too terribly rushed to try a 3.5" drive since both HDs I have work fine under linux. I think I'll try to make my own cable in the off chance that that's it. Good point about needing help ;) 07-10-2000 20:22:21

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