portable mp3 bootingForum: USB booting Topic: portable mp3 booting started by: Paradox^ Posted by Paradox^ on Nov. 08 2006,13:10
I it possible to make my mp3 iriver iFP-790 to boot DSL(-N)?
Posted by DC103 on Nov. 12 2006,11:41
Hi, I would think there is a good chance you could run Embedded DSL on the MP3 player using QEMU within Windows. So far I have not been able to get any USB drive to boot on my one older computer that has the USB boot option in the BIOS. My best advise would be to try to find a cheap 256MB drive and try making a bootable USB drive on it first before you risk the MP3 player. If you can get the plain USB drive to boot on your computer then start checking out the MP3 player in more detail. If you are running Linux now the rest of this message should be interesting to you. Here is the output of some commands I ran using SUSE Liunx on my Sansa M230 MP3 Player. (my comments are inside the moon things) linux-xiwa:/home/dc # cd /media linux-xiwa:/media # ls -l (find out what director SUSE auto mounted to) total 6132 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-09-27 05:28 floppy -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6246400 2006-11-06 05:18 sandisk256.tar drwxr-xr-x 11 dc root 16384 1969-12-31 19:00 Sansa_m230 (here it is) linux-xiwa:/media # cd Sansa_m230 linux-xiwa:/media/Sansa_m230 # ls -l (check out what is on the MP3, note the portable Win XP programs I already have on the MP3 player) total 816 drwxr-xr-x 5 dc root 16384 2006-10-28 19:59 7-ZipPortable drwxr-xr-x 2 dc root 16384 2006-09-18 07:44 audible ( MP3 directory) drwxr-xr-x 2 dc root 16384 1980-01-01 00:00 config (would not want to format and loose this without making a backup) drwxr-xr-x 2 dc root 16384 2006-10-29 08:43 dkc drwxr-xr-x 5 dc root 16384 2006-10-28 20:00 FileZillaPortable drwxr-xr-x 5 dc root 16384 2006-10-28 20:01 FirefoxPortable drwxr-xr-x 5 dc root 16384 2006-10-29 08:33 GIMPPortable -rwxr-xr-x 1 dc root 647176 2006-10-29 07:31 PStart.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 dc root 5222 2006-10-29 08:53 PStart.xml drwxr-xr-x 2 dc root 16384 1980-01-01 00:00 record -rwxr-xr-x 1 dc root 197 1980-01-01 00:00 sys_conf.dnc drwxr-xr-x 5 dc root 16384 2006-10-28 20:02 ThunderbirdPortable linux-xiwa:/media/Sansa_m230 # df -h (check out the disk space) Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on (---cut---) /dev/sda1 484M 136M 349M 28% /media/Sansa_m230 linux-xiwa:/media/Sansa_m230 # linux-xiwa:/media/Sansa_m230 # cd (get out of the director so it can be un mounted) linux-xiwa:~ # pwd /root linux-xiwa:~ # umount /dev/sda1 linux-xiwa:~ # cfdisk /dev/sda (check out what files system was used) cfdisk 2.12r Disk Drive: /dev/sda Size: 507396096 bytes, 507 MB Heads: 31 Sectors per Track: 32 Cylinders: 999 Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ sda1 Boot, NC Primary FAT16 [Sansa m230 ] 507.40 (FAT16 is what you want, might be possible to make bootable without formating) [Bootable] [ Delete ] [ Help ] [Maximize] [ Print ] [ Quit ] [ Type ] [ Units ] [ Write ] Toggle bootable flag of the current partition A good quick read on making a bootalble flashdrive is at: < http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....h_Drive > Let me know if you are running Linux and would like some sample of how to backup the MP3 player. I'm looking into making a bootable Biz card CD that would boot DSL then if I can figure out how, it would then use the MP3 player or a standard USB flashdrive to store info and maybe a few extra programs. I think because of the trouble I have had getting USB to boot the CD may be the way to go. The advantages would be you would still have a very compact system, just the biz card CD and the player but unlike using just the CD you would be able to save info and programs and it would be bootable on almost any computer. A bit later today I will try booting DSL and see if I can mount the MP3 player. Will post a update on how it goes. Hope this was interesting, DC |