SD Card Boot Force ROM Upgrade Method ?

[KnightBird]

Has anyone tried extracting the files from the IMG file using the program WINIMAGE ?? Its a great program, http://www.winimage.com/ I don't have a ROM file to try it with, but there is a free trial download...

Just a thought cause i didn't see it mentioned..

You can calculate the CRC using any of these two programs

http://www.tweaks2k2.com/binfiles/crccheck.zip

or

http://www.tweaks2k2.com/binfiles/CRC32VB.exe

But the problem is to know the name of the CRC file and extension and what it the format of the file (how the CRC is saved there).

Has anyone tried extracting the files from the IMG file using the program WINIMAGE ?? Its a great program, http://www.winimage.com/ I don't have a ROM file to try it with, but there is a free trial download...

Just a thought cause i didn't see it mentioned..

I do not see anywhere Windows CE mentioned there

I gave wimimage a try but no luck. Thanks anyway :)

[sivero]

It´s a x50v, so count me in if you need to test it too.

BTW, I can get to the bootloader.

The first attempt at flashing with reconstructed .nb0 has failed I think. Although our volunteer is still leaving it running for a while it just sits at the .nb0 selection screen and appears to do nothing.

We should have another result soon using a .CRC file as well but we're not sure of the format for the file. Have tried using CRC32 text format that looks like this :-

CRC Values for diag.nb0

diag.nb0 -- 1293EAB9

If anyone has an idea of other CRC formats then please feel free to post.

I think that a little up from where I cut the bin file in the start point there is another possible start point. So I'll prepare another file today just in case ;)

[alanbr2]

I think that a little up from where I cut the bin file in the start point there is another possible start point. So I'll prepare another file today just in case ;)

Good news. Thanks for the help!!!
Alan

Good news. Thanks for the help!!!
Alan

Well, I really don't know if that's a good news but at least is another chance. If the upgrade in this way really needs the CRC file we need to find out the format of that CRC file and I'm afraid that I do not have anything at this moment that I could use to help you guys in this point. So... Keep looking that's all I can say.

Thanks ctitanic! I'm progressing the CRC issue by email and on a couple of newsgroups but have no results yet. Just putting some feelers out. Does anyone know where any Dell techs hang out? Maybe we should kidnap one ;-)

[UnLoGiC]

Kepp up the good work guys!

I'm impressed by how fast you are reverse engeneering this process. Maybe this will eneable us to make our own custom ROM images like thoose seen floating around at XDA developer. Ofcourse it will require nerves of steel but imagine having an image without crap like home.exe and a proper bluetooth stack!

Kepp up the good work guys!
....without crap like home.exe and a proper bluetooth stack!

I'm looking forward to that day... and it's not far! thanks ctitanic and guys!

[X51V_User]

Maybe the guys over at handheld.org doing the porting of linux to x50 will know something about the ROM image.

http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/DellAximX50

[jdesvin]

I stumbled in here from a reference in the win32 newsgroups regarding this thread. I own an Axim x3i but must admit I've been on the slacker side when it comes to developing software for the platform. Still, I find Axim to be a fun device and would like to assist you in your endeavors (the possibility of Linux on Axim sounds great to me!).

There are endless ways for calculating crc's, but most likely Dell implemented one of the more standard approaches. I would suggest that the real puzzle is how the crc is represented in the file. Does anyone have an example crc file with corresponding image?

I'll try and remember to watch this thread. You can also contact me at
j*desvin@*yahoo.*com (remove the *'s)

I stumbled in here from a reference in the win32 newsgroups regarding this thread. I own an Axim x3i but must admit I've been on the slacker side when it comes to developing software for the platform. Still, I find Axim to be a fun device and would like to assist you in your endeavors (the possibility of Linux on Axim sounds great to me!).

There are endless ways for calculating crc's, but most likely Dell implemented one of the more standard approaches. I would suggest that the real puzzle is how the crc is represented in the file. Does anyone have an example crc file with corresponding image?

I'll try and remember to watch this thread. You can also contact me at
j*desvin@*yahoo.*com (remove the *'s)

Hi jdesvin. I think you've hit the nail on the head. Using CDCheck I've created lots of CRC's using MD5, CRC-32, ADLER32, GOST32, SHA1, TIGER, RIPEMD etc. but the problem is we dont know how the 'checksums' should be placed in the .CRC file.

Sample output from CDCheck looks like :-

[Info]
Version=1
Format=SHA512
Date=28.11.2005
CreatedBy=CDCheck (http://elpros.si/CDCheck/)

[Data]
DIR 
e649a436795381943de04ea279ffc712ae32e407d35a83782c018eb045a32e1b6d57ed2eace8414ec23a2b8499dd0650ea52f6c7d9931d2c1dd533df334de728 diag.nb0

...but of course the Dell bootloader wont be looking for all that proprietary stuff (unless they used CDCheck to create the .CRC file in the first place which would be nice). At this stage I think we may need an example file rather than just blindly trying to push ahead.

Which takes me to the post above about the guys over at handheld.org. I think that is now the best approach. Thanks for the info X51V_User :) We should see if they have any good news for us on file formats etc.

EDIT:- The other approach would be to find someone who can reverse engineer / decompile the bootloader so we can find out how it parses the .CRC file. There's a thought.

There are references in the ROM to CRC32 but I'm no coder for this platform so wouldn't know if it's worth looking at :-