Omnibook 430- Other Operating Systems

[legooolas]

(12-17-2016 02:13 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  

(12-16-2016 03:33 AM)Omnibook 425 Wrote:  Is it possible to "create" an OB430 ROM Card and does such an upload exist? I have a 425 and would like to try some new operating systems besides windows 3.1.

It took a lot of trial and error to find a flash card that worked. Fortunately the techs at work had a bunch of spare linear flash cards scavenged from old Cisco routers and I was able to test a bunch until I found one that worked.

This is an incredibly old thread, and I'm happy to make a new one if it makes more sense to do so, but do you (or anyone else here!) know what made the card work whilst others didn't? I've got a 20MB linear flash card from a Cisco router here (A SMART modular technologies SM9FA520-C7500S) and it is completely anonymous as regards identification to PCMCIA when plugged in, and has no CIS structure on it. Looks to be an Intel 28F016S5 flash chip and the Linux box I'm plugging it into can detect the flash chips etc OK, plus after an amount of terrible kernel and pcmcia/MTD hackery I've got it to write and verify, but it won't boot the OB300.

I want to be able to write the OB425 image to a card and boot that, and preferably even to get an image and card of the OB430 image so that I can try other OSes on my 300, but I don't want to mess with the original and working system card at all until I can write another bootable one!

Any hints greatly appreciated!