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Penciled BIOS; now how do I boot off Sandisk?
Trying to boot from Sandisk QNX image or parallel device or USB jumpdrive with 5.40 BIOS

New MessagePenciled BIOS; now how do I boot off Sandisk? (modified 0 times) icloser
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HI: I've looked and not found an answer to my problem elsewhere, so here goes.
Please forgive me if my questions have already been addressed:

I had my BIOS reflashed to 5.40. Now, my Iopener will not boot from its Sandisk image.
I don't want to put a hard drive in this Iopener, just put a minimal Linux OS on it and
use it as a basic web surfer. The Sandisk drive is recognized (as a D slave drive).
However, a whole bunch of fiddling with BIOS settings
has yet to find me a way to boot from the Sandisk drive. I get an error message about the Sandisk if I use
Smartboot. I have a parallel-port Zip drive. Can I boot from it? I've tried, changing
the boot order to E first and enabling, I think, bi-directionality; again, Smartboot has been no help.
Do I have to buy a laptop cable and drive or adapter to make this Iopener work? The QNX image was fully intact before I removed the BIOS chip for flashing, so I don't know why it would be corrupted or wiped. I'm fresh out of ideas...
Any you might have for me? Thanks in advance for your attention and any suggestions. Icloser out...

07-29-2005 15:28:48

New MessageRE:Penciled BIOS; now how do I boot off Sandisk? (modified 0 times) icloser
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Still have a useless IOpener...Is anyone able to help me get this thing booted? I have a parallel ZIP drive, usb thumb drive, and it fires up the BIOS menus just fine. Any clues as to what happened to my QNX or how to boot to an alternate OS? I just want to reflash the Sandisk and use this as a cheap countertop email device for my wife. I have no laptop harddrive. Thanks in advance!
09-15-2005 16:00:22

New MessageRE:Penciled BIOS; now how do I boot off Sandisk? (modified 0 times) oldman
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icloser:

I do not know about Linux, but once you change the bios to anything except version 1, the i-o will not boot QNIX.

The Sandisk can be partitioned, formatted, made active, and SYSed to boot a DOS prompt of WIN95 or WIN98 just as if it were a real hard drive.

The i-o must be booted from a hard drive to set this up, but once it has been set up, the hd can be removed.

The i-o will only boot from an ide device or the Sandisk: no floppy, usb or parallel port device will boot, and QNIX will probably not recognize any of these devices to copy your Linux start-up files from.

I do not know the procedure for installing Linux on a hard drive, but you will need to instal it to the Sandisk from a hard drive.

Have fun,

oldman
09-15-2005 21:42:55

New MessageRE:Penciled BIOS; now how do I boot off Sandisk? (modified 0 times) ztw4
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You might try M4I (Midori for I-Opener) which was developed by members of this BBS that are a hell of a lot smarter than I am. I still have that installed on one of mine, and frankly it's quite nice. Shoehorned onto the Sandisk at just under 16mb, contains an earlier version of Netscape, runs perfectly fine on a stock machine with the 32mb SODIMM. Recognized my USB network adapter (forget the brand/model), no sweat at all.

I suggest you try doing a search for the M4I image and instructions on installation. Be advised, there are two versions: one for the original WinChip processor, and one for the WinChip2. If you can't find the images anywhere else, I'm pretty sure I have it on CD somewhere and would be happy to send you a copy or upload to the server of your choice.

09-16-2005 08:57:36

New MessageRE:Penciled BIOS; now how do I boot off Sandisk? (modified 0 times) slylock
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I maintain an iopener that my mom uses with Earthlink using the original iOpener software. I actually have several clones of this iOpener, because the iOpener still updates its configuration files from the Earthlink server, and every once in a while there's a glitch that trashes the machine, so I just keep restoring the SANDISK from a master image that works. I don't think all the clones have the same BIOS, as they are different version of the iOpener, but on at least one of them, I have the V5.31-F4 wildpencil bios. This bios works perfectly with the old SANDISK image to run the original iOpener software, at least on this iOpener, which I determined is a V5 from 2001. I suspect your problem (6 months ago, if you're still struggling with it) could be due to a mismatch between the BIOS image you flashed and the version of iOpener you have.
01-12-2006 11:25:46

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