From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <87d46d1d5f9a68d65a67cfef88cfe63b@proxima.alt.za>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] disk/^(mbr format fdisk prep)
From: lucio@proxima.alt.za
In-Reply-To: <7e34edf0ffb0357e57f04a6fab4e75a8@terzarima.net>
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Date: Sat,  8 May 2004 11:50:37 +0200
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 74832a62-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> raw flash is like neither disk nor RAM.  it has many peculiar
> properties.  on that you'll need to use something like aux/flashfs on it,
> after producing the platform-specific parts for devflash.c.
> the format/prep commands don't apply.
>
I thought as much.  It was discussed here before, wasn't it.  I had no
reason to pay it attention at the time, but now it rings a bell.
Thank you for the pointer.

> possibly you're referring to one of the PC-card or USB flash disks?

No, I think what I have is raw Flash.  I have a USB reader/writer and
a thin client that treats Flash RAM as IDE (approximately, haven't
quite figured out all the details yet).  The think client is a bit of
a chicken-and-egg situation: it will read/write the Flash but it needs
to boot from it.  Alternatively, it can boot from the IDE drive, but
that seems to hide the Flash away.  I suspect some clever engineering
has gone into making these mutually exclusive.  The documentation is a
bit thin on the ground.

Still, I have it booting 9load from the Flash card, formatted as a DOS disk (disk/format -t hard -d) but I'd like to put a bit more stuff on the flash card and that requires Plan 9 partitioning.

++L