Quetion about restore original dockstar firmware

I corrupted the original firmware of one of my Dockstars. Fortunately, Jeff's uboot still works and I can still boot into USB Debian. Now I got a CA-42 cable and tested it working. I will try to follow http://plugapps.com/index.php5?title=Hardware:_Seagate_DockStar_Reflashing for reflashing original firmware. However, I have a question about one of the steps. For restoring the ram disk, it was suggested to use ramdisk_v2.0b.img.gz file. Does this make sense? Should I use the .gz file or decompress it and use the .img file? I think using .img file makes more sense but not sure. Hope someone had done it before can tell me what is the correct way. Thanks.

Good luck bro.
Your other option is to install Jeff's recovery system on your NAND, and you would not need ca-42 for that.
At least you would have ssh access on nand again and then wait for "restore nand" program.

Or you can go ahead and have fun with CA-42. I'm sure others will be able to walk you through the process, and I will be interested too, I have CA-42 too but I'm too chicken to try it out yet. So I opted for the recovery system on one of my dockstars and tonidoplugs. I'm hoping "restore nand" program will come out in next few months, but I at least feel comfortable I can boot into nand on both of them.

I will check back in here and see how to do it, so if I get brave enough, I'll give it a shot.

I tried but not successful. The uboot can still boot into USB so there's no loss. I can install Openwrt and boot fine but not the pogolinux. One interesting observations is that the back up of mtd's are all from zero. Does that means the mtd2 also contains mtd0? Has anyone succeeded to restore mtd backups? If anyone did, I would like to know the procedures (using the serial cable).

My Dockstar came with a crc error so I had to get the serial going... and things went better than expected...as that tutorial fixed it for me, don't unzip the gz file, in fact just copy the lines in the tutorial.

I may have been better off using linux to do the serial file writing/transfers, I used punkin on windows and I had to try to load ce_ramdisk_v2.0b.img.gz many times as it failed...I think on the 15th time it worked and has been working since, maybe the write attempts was from punkin protocol hickups or maybe it was bad bits on the nand...The nand on mine worries me. Putting ice in a bag on top of the chip certainly seemed to help writing.

:)

wombat:
I tried a few times and all failed. If I copied the lines, it always said it got "Attempt to write non page aligned data" error when writing the kernel. Somebody said you need the original uboot but not Jeff's. I increase the write length to along page boundary but always hang at the booting linux. Which uboot you are using? Do you have the same error?
Fortunately, I can still boot into USB so it is not a total loss.

"need the original uboot but not Jeff's"
As mine was new then it was the original uboot....
I was only getting the same transmitting timeout error.
I've bricked my fair share of routers and I dare not guess a solution.

On another subject... this package would be great to get going again especially for low power. I have not found the mix of Debian/kernel/linphone/yeaphone versions that work... I think the code needs updating to the new kernel modules....
http://www.devbase.at/voip/yeaphone.php
I'm devastated.
sniff :(

Does anybody has the links to Dockstar latest original firmware? Can you post links and steps to restore it to its original state?

Thanks

m_r_nadh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Does anybody has the links to Dockstar latest
> original firmware? Can you post links and steps to
> restore it to its original state?
>
> Thanks

This one should have everything you need: http://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1323
You should make sure your Dockstar has the original uboot. If you already use Jeff's uboot, you will need to reflesh back to the original one (unless things have changed since when I tried this).