firmware flashing on H300 for CF use

[Mamachi]

Hei!

Thanks, that you spend so much time in this forum!
I got the folowing problem with my H300:

The harddrive gave up in the last month and so I tried the compact flash mod with an 2GB SanDisk CF Card - worked fine! 

So I tried my luck with the TRANSCEND 32GB 133x CF card and tara now get the ATA error: -80 while booting rockbox. 

I use bootloader v5 but thought of trying a patched version for the H300 like the one you can get on:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CFModGuide
witch somehow worked for kokoon on:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=17213.0
to get this TRANSCEND Card running.

BUT!!! How to get the device updated with those h300.hex files when you have no harddrive running to start the original firmware?! same for the CF cards I tried. OF won´t boot.

Is there any possibility to get rockbox flashed instead of the OF into the players Ram or Rom? like it is possible with the h100 series:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverFlashing
or to flash the hex file from rockbox like this eeprom procedure?

thanks so much as so far,

Mamachi

[Llorean]

I don't understand. How would you flash Rockbox if you can't read the disk to read the Rockbox files to flash?

[Mamachi]

This is exactly is my problem...
I can read any file I like in rockbox with this 2GB SanDisc Card I use in this moment, I`m just not able to start original firmware.
so I thought of a way to flash rockbox without using the original firmware like it is described in the IriverFlashing Wiki for the H100

With the iriver_flash plugin it's possible to upgrade the bootloader inside Rockbox without using the original firmware at all

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverFlashing

but I think I can`t use this bootloader on the H3xx and havn`t found anything like this. Is there probably a way to modify rockbox so it would work on h3xx? I have to mention that I´m absolutely not in coding and compiling.

[nls]

but I think I can`t use this bootloader on the H3xx and havn`t found anything like this. Is there probably a way to modify rockbox so it would work on h3xx? I have to mention that I´m absolutely not in coding and compiling.

Correct, you can't use that on a h300 and yes it is likely possible to make rockbox flashable on the h300 but it is very risky business unless you have special hardware to recover a bad flash.

[Mamachi]

hum, ok, thanks!

So, no flashing yet! at least for me :'(
I will try to search another CF Card witch probably boots with the original firmware, to flash the common way!
Is the way the ROM of the H1xx can be flashed also that risky? Probably a newer bootloader will someday make it possible also for the H3xx - 
I still hope to get this TRANSCEND Card running.

[AlexP]

Yes, the H100 is also very risky to flash.

The point about doing this though, is that once a known good version exists, that risk goes down hugely - e.g. the existing bootloaders that Rockbox releases have been tested a massive amount before release to make them pretty damn safe.

The real problem is developing and testing a new bootloader - if you make a mistake, you can only fix the player with specialist hardware, which very few people (and indeed only LinusN I believe) have.  Once it has been tested and released, OK.

[Mamachi]

Thanks for all this information...

Here one more question:
I heard (really not more than a rumour) that it would be possible to hack CompactFlash Cards that way so they behave somehow other... hum, how to describe???
I think this TRANSCEND 32GB Card doesn't somehow support true IDE whatever... (can`t find the link in this moment). So a friend tolled me he heard it would be possible to write a special BIT on those Cards so they are somehow upgraded...

puh... If someone knows something about that - 
I will give my best to find out!

EDIT:
I think it is something like CompactFlash programming on:
http://www.compuphase.com/mbr_fat.htm

Edit:
After all I read it should be bit 15 of the CF Card witch returns the player the wrong value of 1 and it should send 0 to be recognised correctly. A guy soldered something together to change this... but as long it isn't something totally easy and softwarebased I will keep my fingers of that.
( http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/hardware/pb150/PB150_and_CompactFlash.html )