TUTORIAL: The long awaited solution on how to use the SD Image Loader for flashing

[Rice Lover]

Well, unfortunately, it won't work for me, as my wireless button has been weird lately, and it is not working. It is either this, or that my axim, as it does not have a bootloader, because it was deleted in an attempt to fix my axim by using the rollback utility, which crashed after deleting files, and installed nothing.

[nystateofmind]

If you tell me how to extract an image i can do so.

[protege2k]

many many thanks for posting the tutorial. My x50v w/ wm5 was stuck during reset at about the 80% mark. I simply reimaged the OS and now it boots ! awesome!

[UnLoGiC]

Great write up domme, I'm really impressed that you have finaly solved this!

I guess the next step is to create a ROM cooker, something I have looking forward to for a long time. I could easly code the tools/web interface for putting the roms together but I lack the exprience when it comes to extracting data from binary images like nb0 files (is it possible to mount them?). If we work together I'm sure we could be rolling our own X5Xv roms in just a matter of days!

[marco02]

Do you know how the .crc files are made? The "normal" CRC reported by zipping utilities is different than what's in the .crc file. Is there a tool that scans a .nb0 and calculates the expected .crc? Thanks!

yes i look to extract rom to .bin file and how create the .nb0 and .crc files?
thanks

[marco02]

"DiMa_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0 --> Bootloader image, to be installed on a device currently running the Windows Mobile 2003 bootloader, if the device is currently running the Windows Mobile 5 bootloader the filename had to be DiMa_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0"

?????
DiMa_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0--->2003
WM50_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0--->Mobile 5??
NO?

[SilverBandit]

BTW...I still need an X51v A06 Rom-Image for testing purposes...

Hi, I've followed the instructions I found here to create a X51v A06 dump file and when I rar it up it shrinks from 128MB to 142KB - that can't be right, can it? If anyone wants it you can get it from my website.

[obvious]

Hi, I've followed the instructions I found here to create a X51v A06 dump file and when I rar it up it shrinks from 128MB to 142KB - that can't be right, can it? If anyone wants it you can get it from my website.

You're right, it should be in the region of 30MB after compression. I think it created a more or less blank 128MB file. Is there any chance you could try it again and leave it a couple of minutes to write to the file?

Edit: After looking at the file it seems to be repeating the same information over and over again. Very odd.

[domme]

"DiMa_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0 --> Bootloader image, to be installed on a device currently running the Windows Mobile 2003 bootloader, if the device is currently running the Windows Mobile 5 bootloader the filename had to be DiMa_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0"

?????
DiMa_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0--->2003
WM50_B_A01_X50v_WM5_ENG.nb0--->Mobile 5??
NO?

You're right. Corrected it.

[SilverBandit]

You're right, it should be in the region of 30MB after compression. I think it created a more or less blank 128MB file. Is there any chance you could try it again and leave it a couple of minutes to write to the file?

Edit: After looking at the file it seems to be repeating the same information over and over again. Very odd.

Ok, done that, left it for 30 mins while I went for some lunch. Same problem. Also, got an error message when I removed the SD Card (which I ignored last time!) "Error. Cannot create file!"

Either I'm doing something stupid (highly likely) or the instructions I'm following don't work too well on X51v/WM5/A06...

[genuis]

First of al...Thanks for the work


The image that you posted is for an X50v works not on a x50 its dead now! i need a wm2003 image for X50 not a X50v

it is clearly different

Has anyone an image for a X50??

Thanks

[domme]

I hope you did not reflash your bootloader with the X50v one...

Yes the image is different, I thought one would see this in the filename of the image ;-)

Nevertheless I have added it to the description of the links.

[obvious]

Ok, done that, left it for 30 mins while I went for some lunch. Same problem. Also, got an error message when I removed the SD Card (which I ignored last time!) "Error. Cannot create file!"

Either I'm doing something stupid (highly likely) or the instructions I'm following don't work too well on X51v/WM5/A06...

The 'cannot create' message might be because you still had the old dump file on the SD card. Was it a blank FAT32 formatted card?

[hosps]

Thanks again for this great work. I've been able to reload my WM5 and get that working as well as roll back to 2003.

One thing I did notice though after trying both updates (i.e. WM5 and then roll back to 2003) is that the system ran incredibly slow. You could actually see the cursor being redrawn, line by line on the stylus alignment. This went away after 10 minutes but just something to be aware of. Not sure why but if you perform this and it's still sluggish, give it a little time and it will come back to normal.

[puntloos]

5. Press the action key twice, this starts the update process. DANGER: If this process fails your device will be a 300$ paperweight...

Can you elaborate a little bit on this? If I were to ('intentionally') send bad data to my axim, sure it won't work, but does it also mean that from then on this SD image loader process won't work any more? No second tries?

Anyway good work, a lot of people will be happy to have this as a backup, especially now that we can start to toy with images and make our custom ones.

Good job! Now the question on a lot of peoples' minds might be: could I use this method to flash an X51v WM5 rom onto an X50v with WM5 on it already?

An X51v image will NOT work in the x50v. The reason for this is that the x51v uses a different memory hardware configuration (specifically: NAND instead of NOR for its BIS, which at least means XIPing is not possible with the x51v). This also means that various burnt-in configuration settings (specifically: the page pool) do not apply. Too big differences to unify a ROM. That said I have NO idea why dell is being so ungenerous toward x50v owners, the differences between the roms are so slight that a finished x51v rom should be convertable to x50v in a negligible amount of time.

Maybe an axim hacker can figure out this process.. comparing the x50v and x51v roms could be quite enlightening.. assuming they are basically identical.

I suppose that in theory you can make an image that works on both devices but that image can't be instructed to use caching so it would suck badly on both devices.