Anyone care to help me LifeFlash?

[rhondalicious]

I'm trying to get my CF card to work in my Palm, but it's been a complete comedy of errors - between myself and my husband, we *should* have enough geek-knowledge to do it, but we just have a lovely little LD shaped brick.

Does anyone want to either a) coach me through it, a la KISS(keep it simple, stupid) style, or b) have me send them my LifeDrive and CF card and just pay them to do it for me? (Or I'd be willing to let them keep my old MD)

I'd rather do it on my own, because well, then it's something I accomplished - but I've been LifeDriveless for a few days now, and it's driving me crazy - I don't have my phone numbers, or my e-books, or my music, or my datebook...

Help me?

[Joel]

Welcome to 1SRC!

I was able to do it easily via my MacBook Pro. I have a question though... what brand of CF did you get?

[archangel]

I'm having trouble as well. There are lots of instructions out there, but they all seem to skip important things they assume you will know. So far I have had to figure out those things the hard way. I will try the final steps when my CF arrives, but I'm also assuming I will end up with a brick when I'm done.

[rhondalicious]

I've got the Sandisk Extreme III, and it's one I bought on Amazon, and one of the listed serial numbers documented as a working card on the wikia article.

It keeps "almost" working - but I'm doing something wrong, and my husband and I can't figure it out at all. We're only knowledgeable in Windows...
:eek: :(

[fesildeff]

Can your explain in detail the procedure you used?

[fesildeff]

use the "dd" path of the wiki.

[aka.bugle]

Long before I purchased a CF card to do this mod, I had a custom rom on my microdrive, thanks to mrp123 and others here at 1src and of course Alex at HacknDev , who should get most of the credit (sorely missed in the linux/lifedrive crew) Wanting to perform this mod was defining moment when I decided to ditch windows and head down the Linux path.
Give it up.. forget windows, you won't be sorry, sounds like you and your hubby could handle it fine. this mod is WAY more difficult than getting a super Linux setup going. I think the toughest part of this mod is the INCREDIBLE doubt in what the actual requirements for the CF card are. Some are compatable , some not. but not a clear picture of why.
<just my 2 cents>

[rhondalicious]

We started out following the instructions here:http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_replace_microdrive_with_compactflash_in_LifeDrive

We have tried both the cygwin instructions and the dd for windows instructions, and neither of those would work - in the cygwin instructions, I'd get to this point: dd if=/mnt/ldmd of=/usr/ldmd-image and it would tell me ldmd was not found.

in the dd for windows instructions, I'd get to this point: dd if=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\DR18 of=ldmd.img --progress (with the correct location from the previous step inserted) and it would give an error (something 28? or 82? my husband can't remember - he posted it elsewhere here on 1src under my name, should be in my post history). At that point, it would say something like:
43990+1 records in
43990+0 records out

And then when I tried it, just to see if *maybe* it worked, I just had it get stuck on the palmone screen.

We then tried the instructions for putting a completely new rom on my CF card, forllowing the hackndev instructions, but then at first it couldn't see where we were trying to write the information to, and it kept dumping a file named "h" (the drive the CF card was plugged into) - after some fiddling, we got it to start writing to the CF card itself, but then it told us there was an error with the filesize and it would quit loading stuff halfway through (and leaving me stuck back at that same palmone screen).

I think it has something to do with the python script that you have to edit, and the table that you're supposed to generate - we were never able to generate that table(we kept getting errors or else generated tables of 0 bytes), my hubs found a copy of it someone posted online, but either that's not working, or else we edited that python script with the incorrect filesize.

I haven't even looked at my poor lifedrive in days :-/

[aka.bugle]

I feel your pain! after getting a counterfeit sandisk card that actually had correct parameters, but wouldn't boot ... then 2nd card,it turns out, a bum patriot card.. I was starting to think that my main board was fried , as i could load my rom to the card but could only get it to boot if i jump-started the card (reseting the card on and off the pins till i saw orange disk activity led flash) this was un acceptable as i could not reset the unit unless i opened it back up an do the jump-starting again...
As I had my doubt about the card and the main board... I sent the LD off to chris short and had him try to figure out the problems, he couldn't get the card to boot correctly (my patriot) even after loading his version of a full rom on it. so I had him put in a new card (his, another patriot, exact same part # as mine) and a new battery. my main board was fine. he returned it quicker than quick. and I bit the bullet and pulled it immediately apart and loaded my lightened rom to it. end of story. some cards work, some don't. some have an easy time, others its like digging a 100 mile ditch.
If.... IF.... if your card is good. you can get this to work w/ windows. try comparing the size of the unchanged roms size in windaws with whats been quoted here. (maybe windows ireports a skewed size of your zip file?) I remember windows giving me different #'s for file sizes than linux does. sounds like your close...

[rhondalicious]

I'm just about ready to sell mine to someone and buy a T|X like my husband has :-/ I would just miss my 4 GB built in! With 2 small kids who like to go through my purse, it's easier to just not have the teeny SD cards.

Luckily my brother in law has a Linux box and is a lot more familiar with it than I am (he's been bugging me to dual-boot my PC with Ubuntu, and now I'm about ready to do it - I can always play my games on my laptop!), so on his day off I'm trekking up to his place to see if he can help me rescue my poor baby.