[Soekris] writing compact flash devices on macintosh

[Greg Shenaut]

Some time ago, I contacted this list about some problems I was having  
getting my soekris box to boot.

I was using dd on a PPC Mac to write a monowall image on a 512 MB  
SandDisk flash device, over a Lexar firewire cf interface. The write  
was error-free and it read back and cmp'ed correctly. However, my  
soekris 4801 just sort of died after booting. The console didn't  
report any errors, it just died. I tried other variations of this  
theme, but always got the same result. The consensus of the list was  
that it sounded like I was doing everything correctly, so the problem  
was either a bad soekris or something to do with using a Mac.

Yesterday I got a chance to pick this project back up. First, I  
thought that perhaps there was a difference in the lba sector mapping  
due to the size of the cf device, so I tried it again with a 32 MB  
device--it's getting hard to find low capacity cf's!). This time, it  
still failed to boot, but the soekris was able to write "Boot error"  
before hanging.

Recently, we bought an inexpensive Windows notebook because some  
other hardware we have requires the use of Windows to configure it.  
So, I got a cheap usb cf interface, downloaded physdiskwrite, and  
wrote the original 512 MB cf that way.

This time, it worked flawlessly, and I finally have a monowall box to  
play with.

I don't know what it was about using the Mac that messed up the cf  
write, maybe someday someone with more curiosity than I have will  
investigate and lets us know. But for now, the take-home message is:  
do not use Macintoshes to write cf devices to be used in the soekris !

Greg Shenaut