Missing internal Storage Folder Mystery Solved (sort of)

[ppc4]

The internal Storage Folder up and disappeared one day. In mucking around with SD flashes at different locations trying to figure out the problem, I started changing the size of internal Storage from 8MB to 7MB to 6MB, etc.

Finally, after changing the internal Storage size to only 5MB in the OS ROM, the Storage folder reappeared again. Attempting to write anything (such as trying to zero it out via an SD flash of the storage area) resulted in a failed download.

If I stick to only the 5MB area, SD backups for storage and reflashes work flawlessly.

Has anybody every seen this problem before? Possible bad memory in those locations?

Anyway to force something to be written there?

[marco899]

Today after installing drivers for my spectec wifi card, my storage was complete gone. Hard reset, original rom nothing restored the storage space. Then i decided to make an bigstoragerom and now my storage space is back.

[patjack]

Today after installing drivers foor my spectec wifi card, my storage was complete gone. Hard reset, original rom nothing restored the storage space. Then i decided to make an bigstoragerom and now my storage space is back.

Interesting.... my storage is gone too... and I am not sure if
it's related to the SanDisk WiFi driver I am using.
I tried hard reset / flashing with original ROM and nothing restored as well...

What if you now flash with the original ROM?

[marco899]

I think that the storage still exist, when i'am flashing back to the original rom. But i like the bigstorage. But why dit i lose my storage in the first place? I think that the .cab file from spectec (witch i had installed in the storage space) not only erased it's self after installation, but also the entire storage space.

[ppc4]

I have tried everything I can think to get either the original 8MB of Storage space or the BigStorage to show after a hard reset. I have worked on this extensively and what I finally figured out is that if I set the Storage space to 5MB or less in the OS ROM, it shows up. Anything greater than that causes the Magician to not show the Storage area after a hard reset.

The original OS ROM has this twice in the ROM file:
02 00 00 80 00 20 20 00 00

This states that the Storage area is going to be 8MB. BigStorage sets it to this:
02 00 00 B8 01 20 20 00 00

...which tells the OS to use 27MB for the Storage area and this is how the BigStorage hack works.

I have attempted to read and rewrite that 8MB area of ROM and the write always fails after approximately 5MB. This is what tipped me off to setting the Storage size smaller. I believe something has happened (hardware wise) to that section of ROM and it's been toasted.

I finally wound up setting my Storage area to 5MB:
02 00 00 50 00 20 20 00 00

...and this finally worked. The Storage area came back after a hard reset at 4.66MB of available space.

If you folks like playing around the OS ROM and flashing, you may want to try setting the Storage area smaller to see if it comes back.

Let me know if you have any other ideas but I don't think there's anything I can do to fix my Storage area.

[patjack]

My O2 Mini crashed (self-hard-reset) yesterday and
so I tried the other WME ROM, but it refuses to run.

Can I find this hex string in the exe file?
If so, I can easily hack the bytes and try.
Otherwise, I"ll need to fuss around with the NB1, which
I am a bit reluctant.

[ppc4]

My O2 Mini crashed (self-hard-reset) yesterday and
so I tried the other WME ROM, but it refuses to run.

Can I find this hex string in the exe file?
If so, I can easily hack the bytes and try.
Otherwise, I"ll need to fuss around with the NB1, which
I am a bit reluctant.

The hex string doesn't exist in the nk.nbf file which is the OS when running the executable ROM upgrade program.

Editing the nb1 file is the only way to change the Storage sizes as far as I know.