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A Sanity Check

New MessageA Sanity Check (modified 0 times) kwende
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Hello world,

Perhaps it is the fact that I have never been great at picking things up from threads, but I'm having trouble finding out for sure whether the knowledge I have about where to start hacking the iOpener is valid. So I thought I would post my two pieces of knowledge I consider foundational here - and see if I get re-directed, called names, etc.

I believe that I'm running a v5; I have tried many of the key-combinations I have found on this board (yes, I've been searching long and hard now for about three days), to get into the BIOS, but no methods work. Ctrl-Alt-Esc, hitting Tab and the 4 key, etc. None of them appear to work for me. So, my first thought is,

1) I need to flash the BIOS with an old image so that it's "enterable", that is, I can get inside it so that I can accomplish number 2 (Q: What image do I flash it with? What is the best BIOS image to use?)...

2) From the BIOS, set things up so I may attach a hard-drive to the iOpener to flash the SanDisk with whatever operating system I choose from the HD. (How to do this I believe I can extract from the threads)

My preference would be to actually flash the SanDisk with an operating system, like Midori, etc. and not have that external hard-drive (not have the HD there at all, but have my OS on the SanDisk). So do I have this right - or am I way off in left field? My apologies for those who are hitting their heads against their keyboards in frustration that yet another idiot asks these simple questions, but believe me that I've used the search option for several days now and haven't found a thread that confirms my thoughts, mostly partial threads and such that assume I can get straight into my BIOS and start from there...

Thanks in advance,
Ben

09-08-2002 22:56:50

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) *SF*
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1) Yes, Visit http://www.Linux-Hacker.net New BIOS Released

Wild_Pencil writes "BIOS 5.40 is finally done! This version implements Georgie's latest USB-tweaks, as well as most of the other improvements (CD-Booting) I made in previous enhanced versions. (Three Cheers for Georgie! YAY! YAY! YAAAY!!!!) BADFLASH USERS: If you're using BadFlash V531C, and you need the special AMD K6 support it provides, please contact BadFlash directly for his upgrade. (I didn't write the K6 support code, and therefore I cannot support or include it.) The New Public BIOS is available at briefcase.yahoo.com/wild_pencil "

2) True. http://www.badflash.com to Purchase BIOS & Twisted IDE Cable

Please consider this Your Personal Thread & continue to ask any Questions Here.
I think it would be better to follow each new person the whole way in one thread,
But that is just My thought, Good Luck ! * StarFish *

09-08-2002 23:40:03

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) kwende
Profile
Okay, I noticed in Wild_Pencil's briefcase that there are different BIOS images,

V100 .BIN 256 KB 20-Jan-2002
V200 .BIN 256 KB 20-Jan-2002
V500 .BIN 256 KB 20-Jan-2002
V540 .BIN 256 KB 23-Jun-2002

My question then is this: Are the versions in relation to the iOpener version (V1 - V5) I am to flash, or are these different versions of this single BIOS image to be flashed on to all different iOpeners? (e.g. V100 is flashed onto V1 iOpeners, V200 on to V2 iOpeners and so on..). I'm sure there's a thread out there - I'll see if I can find some stuff by Wild_Pencil, but a response would still be nice!

Thanks,
Ben

09-09-2002 18:47:58

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) *SF*
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V540 .BIN 256 KB 23-Jun-2002
Should be what You want.
I think All will work on any Version I-Opener except
Version 5s must use V5 BIOS for Sound.
09-09-2002 20:44:40

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) kwende
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Is there anyone out there who has ever received no LILO prompt when booting from an iOpener - just the word Boot? I installed RedHat 6.2 onto a 1 GIG laptop hard drive and was going to just run it from the iOpener to then flash the SanDisk with a midori image on the HD. The problem, though, is that I cannot get RedHat 6.2 to boot. When I launch RedHat 6.2 from the computer I installed everything on, I runs fine, however, if I transfer the HD to the iOpener and run from there - no luck.

What happens looks like something I've seen before, and something often mentioned on this BBS - that is the VFS Kernel Panic solved by appending hdb=noprobe (not sure if that's exact, but something like that) to lilo.conf and then re-running LILO. HOWEVER, even after I have added all of that to lilo.conf, re-run LILO, I still get NO LILO prompt, only Boot: in multiple colors - and since I get no LILO prompt, the probing I've turned off via lilo.conf (noprobe) dosen't take effect, and so the probing continues and I crap out when my machine tries to probe the SanDisk.

I have tried 6.2, and when trying to install 7.2, the system just re-boots to the BIOS screen (note, I haven't searched the board yet for reasons of this....).

Thanks for any info,
Ben

09-11-2002 12:39:05

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) spikeorama
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I have RedHat 6.2 installed on one of my I-Openers. I don't recall seeing the problem you mentioned but it's been a while since I installed so maybe I've forgotten. The drive is a 4G Fujitsu MHF2043AT.

Here is my lilo.conf:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/System.map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
linear
default=linux.noacpi
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.3.99-pre9-noacpi
label=linux.noacpi
read-only
root=/dev/hda5
append="hdb=noprobe"

My fdisk output looks like:
/dev/hda1 * 1 3 24066 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 4 526 4200997+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 4 264 2096451 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 265 281 136521 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 282 526 1967931 83 Linux

hda1 is mounted as /boot
hda5 is mounted as /
hda6 is the swap partition
hda7 is mounted as /home

Good luck!

09-11-2002 19:22:38

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) kwende
Profile
DOH! Yes, I forgot to set the drive up as hda, it was setup as hdc. So, it boot fine on my PC because it didn't change positions, (I hooked it up to the same IDE cable each time), but on the iOpener, it was supposed to be hda and not hdc. Once I set things up correctly to allow this to happen, everything boot right.

I also hit the mbr with fdisk /mbr, the boot finally displayed LILO - I'm not sure, but I think I had a couple things weird on this installation.

So, this is what I have so far:

1) Flashed the BIOS with v540 Wild_Pencil,
2) Installed RedHat 6.2 onto 1 GIG laptop HD,
3) Edited /etc/lilo.conf to have append="hdb=noprobe",
4) Set the drive up to be hda instead of hdc (I'm retarded!),
5) and got it to boot.

TODO:

1) Install Midori image onto the laptop HD from my computer,
2) Transfer to iOpener,
3) Flash SanDisk,
4) Boot from SanDisk.

Does anyone have any advice or see any errors in my TODOs?

Thanks,
Ben

09-12-2002 09:34:47

New MessageRE:A Sanity Check (modified 0 times) kwende
Profile
Me again. Yes, I finally got everything installed correctly - Midori is running nicely on the SanDisk and life is good. Of course, now I have to go and make a mess of everything again....

I would like to know if anyone out there has made any progress in hacking the sandisk without cracking the iOpener. I noticed a thread out there that deals on this subject and I'm just curious if anyone has made any progress, has any direction, etc.

Any posts would be appreciated, even if it's to make fun of how much I don't know about this subject.

Thanks,
Ben

09-18-2002 18:11:46

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