Hi Bruce,

What are you formatting the card as? It should be done in FAT format and not FAT 32. This could cause a problem.

Are you saying that mounting the card in LogicLoader doesn't work?

Thanks,

Formatting in XP as FAT (which is FAT16). Also I tried formatting in a DOS box under XP, using FAT. Also I tried formatting from CE 5.0 control panel/storage.

None of these work. Should there be a volume label or not? Any other ideas for formatting?

Bruce,

Please refer to my question above.

Also let me know to what degree you're able to use the CF card.

Is it not showing up in Windows XP as well?

Thanks,

mount fatfs /cf doesn't work in LOLO

mount fatfs /cf_card doesn't work in LOLO

The card works just fine in XP, and up until I reformatted it, it has been working fine for the last several months with LOLO also.

Can you tell me what version of LogicLoader you're using? Did you recently update LogicLoader to a new version?

LOLO 2.02, but the card was working fine under this version for several days until this morning when I reformatted it.

Hi Bruce,

Can you post the specs of the CF card that you're using? Manufacturer, size, density, etc?

Thanks,

Kingston 256 MB model CF/256 9930409-003.A00

I think I originally formatted it on my previous computer which was Win 2000. It's been working fine since June 2004.

I remembered that I had bought and formatted two of these cards originally . I retrieved the other card, and it works just fine.

I tried formatting the first card on a Win2K computer, same model as the one I originally used, but it still doesn't work.

I still want to get the first card working, but I'm out of ideas.

Bruce,

Is it possible that something went "wrong" with the formatting in XP? What I mean by this is that there's a possibility of corruption on the CF card from maybe taking the CF card out of the slot before it's completely formatted. XP might error trap for this scenario but LogicLoader would have problems.

Well, I did reformat the card on a Win2k machine. Do you know a way to clean a CF card down to the raw bytes, so as to destroy anything XP may have put on the card and allow a clean run at formatting?

Bruce,

I'm not sure of how to do what you've requested. All of the CF cards that I use are formatted as FAT 16 under Windows XP and I've never had this problem so I'm not sure what has happened in your specific situation.

I have found a few important pieces of information, if not yet a solution:

1) WinCE will format the 256M CF card to FAT32 by default, although it can be formatted to FAT16 by using the Properties/Format partition instead of the Format disk button in the Storage Manager in Control Panel.

2) LoLo will not work with a FAT32 formatted CF card, though WinCE is perfectly happy with it.

3) When a CF card is formatted under WinCE, the FAT16 partition created is an Extended partition instead of a Primary partition. On my computer, WinXP Pro seems to do the same thing. LoLo will only mount a Primary partition on a CF card. I have not yet determined whether the partition also has to be an Active partition, though on the CF card that works it is a Primary, Active partition.

These partition aspects are not obvious and required a lot of digging, and experience from the DOS days to understand.

Well, I got tired of playing around with Windows trying to get it to do what I wanted. I booted a SUSE Live CD, and formatted the card with a FAT16 Primary partition on the card and no extended partitions. It's not an Active partition, but that doesn't seem to matter to LOLO.

It boots fine in LOLO and works as well as the other card I had created before.

Bruce,

Glad to hear that you've resolved this.

Regards,

As a follow up to this thread here's another solution:

LogicLoader requires a CompactFlash card to be formatted with a primary partition. Formatting the card from within Windows CE may create an extended partition, thereby making the card unrecognizable to LogicLoader.

If a CompactFlash card has already been formatted with an extended partition, it will not be recognized by LogicLoader the next time the SOM is reset. To reformat the CompactFlash card with a primary partition, use a program that allows the partition type to be controlled. The “fdisk” utility has this feature, as does a free tool available from Hewlett-Packard called the “Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device” is available at the following link:

http://h18007.www1.hp.com...download/20306.html.

Important Note: If this link is no longer valid doing a search for “Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device” in an online search engine will turn up a valid link to HP’s website where the file will be available for download.
This tool will reformat the CompactFlash card to have a primary partition and LogicLoader will recognize the CompactFlash card.