From: Gert Menke (g.menke_at_gmx.net)
Date: Tue Mar 02 2004 - 12:16:17 PST
Hi Jeff,
> Has anyone tried--under Linux, BSD, or MacOS X--to use the "dd" command to
> backup and restore a Compact Flash or PCMCIA card full of Newton software?
> I don't have a reader here to try it, but it seems like this would work
> perfectly and great for keeping snapshots of data over time (a cron job
> could even archive over night if you plug the card into a reader).
I tried this once with a 16MB card from Kingmax. Reading the card worked fine,
but writing did not. :-(
The dd command did not produce any errors, but the data on the card remained
unchanged. So the dd command effectively did nothing while pretending to work
fine.
> For instance, you'd type in something like:
> dd if=/dev/devicename of=/tmp/newtendo_ROMs.img
> ...where "devicename" is the proper device for accessing your normal
> CompactFlash or PCMCIA cards.
There is a special driver for linear flash memory cards. It creates more than
one device node since linear flash cards sometimes seem to have more than one
memory area (like partitions on ata cards?). And you can also access the
"attribute memory" of the card (which holds information about the card
itself, such as what kind of card it is) through a device node.
BEWARE: Don't try to write to the attribute memory of the card unless you
really know what you are doing! I did not know what I was doing... and then
my card did not remember that it was a memory card anymore... :-(
Luckily I could revive the card after the nice people from Kingmax sent me a
memory dump of an intact card.
> If someone can try this, please let the list know. I imagine it would
> making archiving card data a breeze, especially if the majority of your
> data (notes, contacts, etc.) sits on cards.
That would indeed be great, if you could actually restore the data after
making a backup... It did not work for me but, of course, YMMV.
Regards,
Gert
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