peterjb31

Oh yeah, I had difficulty using the dd command through a usb compact flash card reader so instead used an ide to compact flash adpater.

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Mathiou

So if I understand correctly, you made a hard-reset after installing your CF into the Lifedrive to format correctly all partitions. Am I wrong ?



You mean this method :How to manually install PalmOS ?

mrp123

Mathiou, if I may, I don't think that's what he meant. Here's my interpretation. peterjb31, please correct me where I'm wrong.



By issuing a hard reset (out of curiosity?), the device didn't "power on" correctly as opposed to normally powering it on and it working correctly. [Insert a period]. Specifically, the hard reset caused a reset loop.



He speculated the reset loop was because the CF card had a different number of sectors than the disk drive and thought the LifeDrive didn't like that. So a hard reset triggered a reformat of the CF card so the card would appear like the disk drive. The reformat failed yet continually retried and hence the loop.

I don't know the real reason for the loop, but that's how I read his statements.

I'm not sure about hackndev.com.
peterjb31, is it http://hackndev.com/node/425 ?

peterjb31

Sorry I am often half asleep when I go on these forums. What I meant is when I powered on the device it entered a reset loop. By hard resetting the device this problem was removed. From that I specualted it was because of the different numbers of sectors which caused the reset loop and when a hard reset reformatted the partitions it solved the problem.

Honestly I don't know the reason for the loop but I know a hard reset solved it.

Hope this helps.

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Playstation 1

The only thing worse than an ignorant fool is an arrogant fool.

mrp123

Thank you so much. Any detail you can offer helps. I'm itching to try this myself though I have no experience using Linux much less "dd" nor do I possess an IDE CF reader nor any CF card. Pretty limiting. It helps to hear that others have had some success with it before taking a plunge.

potter

My theory:

On a soft-reset, the Lifedrive performs a CHKDSK on the two FAT partitions of the HD. On a hard-reset, the Lifedrive performs a FORMAT on the virtual memory partition, and optionally the storage partition. When following the procedure on hackndev, the CF had the partition table and ROM partition initialized, but the two FAT partitions were not yet formatted. When the device powered up, it did the equivalent of a soft-reset, this then attempted to perform the CHKDSK on the FAT partitions. However, since these were not yet formatted, this caused a fault and thus a soft-reset and thus a reset-loop.

mrp123

Can you provide a link? I don't know where this is.

potter

Sorry, I was unclear. I was referring to the hackndev page http://hackndev.com/node/196, but instead of using a Hitachi Micro Drive, using an equivalent 4G CF card. This is what I understand peterjb31 did.

slade{tmjb2}

Hey All.

I'm a long time reader and first time poster.

After realizing that a combination of heavy wifi and harddisk usage on my lifedrive was resulting in a 10% power drain every time I synced Avantgo wirelessly, I had decided I was going to replace my lifedrive with a palm tx. Then I came across this thread and decided to swap my lifedrives 4gb microdrive for a 4gb compact flash card.

The white oem microdrive in the lifedrive can not be used with most compact flash readers, so I purchased an ide-to-compact flash adapter along with the recommended sandisk 4gb compact flash card from newegg. My current linux box is actually a mac mini, so I had to hook up the ide-to-compact flash adapter to my windows box.

Using the windows version of dd, I was able to make an image of the lifedrives's 4gb microdrive and write the image to the 4gb compact flash card using the instructions stated in the thread below.

http://hackndev.com/node/425

I inserted the compact flash card into the lifedrive and the lifedrive resumed operation as normal. I did a soft reset just to make sure the life drive was trully working correctly and everything worked out great.

Now, my lifedrive's performance and battery life are greatly improved.

Thanks to everyone who posted all the information in this thread enabling me to perform this much needed mod.

potter

Question: It appears to me that everyone who has successfully done this has used an IDE to CF adaptor, and not a USB to CF adaptor. Is this true? I have seen mentions of using a USB to CF adaptor, but no one actually saying that this is what they had done.

mrp123

My memory agrees with yours. I don't recall anyone reporting success with a USB CF card reader. It appears IDE CF readers have worked. I unfortunaltey don't have the time to dig around to verify my answer, but regarding your question, potter, I've been thinking what you've been thinking as well.

I don't know why, though. My guess is because IDE acheived ubiquity long before USB thus giving IDE better universal support. Only a guess.

mrp123

slade, welcome. please give us some updates to let everyone know other ways the mod has been working for you; life 2.0 with the lifedrive.

Hopefully there won't be a need to jump ship for the T|X like everyone else. I'm not interested in giving my money to Palm twice.

dmitrygr

i used usb-connected digicam

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slade{tmjb2}

This faq from hitachi explains that the white label microdrive is the true ide version of the microdrive and is designed to be used as embedded storage. It also says that the white label microdrive may not function properly in other environments.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/microfaq.htm#a20

I found this to be the case when attempting to access the microdrive using a compact flash reader. It's because of this very fact that I ordered an ide-to-compact flash adapter to copy the microdrive to an image file without any problems.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16822998002

I actually used a compact flash reader to write the image file to the sandisk 4gb compact flash card.