=============================================================================== WRITING PsionLX TO A COMPACTFLASH CARD =============================================================================== Nothing in this process touches the netBook Pro's internal flash. The machine boots from the card. Take the card out and it boots Windows CE again exactly as before. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT YOU NEED ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * A Psion Teklogix netBook Pro. * A CompactFlash card of 1 GB or larger. Type I or II both work. Older/slower cards are fine; this is a 400 MHz XScale machine. * A CF card reader on a Mac, Linux or Windows PC. The images are 1,024,966,656 bytes each -- just under 1 GiB, so they fit a card sold as "1 GB" even though such cards are usually slightly smaller than a true gibibyte. Anything larger also works; the spare space is simply unused unless you grow the partition afterwards. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHICH IMAGE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- psionlx-cf-1gb.img THE ONE TO USE. The full build, with every application. psionlx-cf-1gb-asphotographed.img An archival variant whose Programs screen shows only the 21 applications visible in Psion's own photograph of the prototype, and nothing else. For people who want the screen to match the photograph exactly. Every binary is still present -- only the menu entries differ. See AS-PHOTOGRAPHED.txt. Check what you downloaded before writing it: shasum -a 256 psionlx-cf-1gb.img (macOS) sha256sum psionlx-cf-1gb.img (Linux) and compare against SHA256SUMS.txt in this folder. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MACOS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. FIND THE CARD. The device number is NOT stable. macOS hands out the next free number each time something is plugged in, so a card that was /dev/disk10 last week can be /dev/disk4 today. Always look it up again, every time: diskutil list external physical That lists only real external disks, so it will normally show one entry. If nothing is listed, the reader is not attached or the card is not seated -- re-seat it and look again. CHECK THE SIZE MATCHES the card you put in before going any further. 2. UNMOUNT IT -- unmount, not eject: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN 3. WRITE IT. Use rdiskN (raw), which is many times faster than diskN: sudo dd if=psionlx-cf-1gb.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=4m status=progress Expect several minutes. On a slow card, considerably longer. 4. EJECT: diskutil eject /dev/diskN Replace N with the number you looked up in step 1. WRITING TO THE WRONG DISK DESTROYS IT, and /dev/disk0 is your Mac's own drive. Run "diskutil list external physical" once more immediately before the dd command. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINUX ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Identify the card with "lsblk" and check the size carefully, then: sudo dd if=psionlx-cf-1gb.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync /dev/sdX, not /dev/sdX1 -- the image contains the partition table. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WINDOWS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use Rufus, balenaEtcher, or Win32DiskImager in "write image" mode and select the whole card, not a drive letter. Windows will afterwards offer to format the card, because it cannot read the ext2 partition. SAY NO. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOTING IT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Put the card in the netBook Pro's CF slot and power on. BooSt, the netBook Pro's bootloader, looks on the FAT partition for a file called nBkProOs.img, loads it, and runs it. That is the kernel and initrd; it then mounts the ext2 partition as root. You should see the Psion boot splash, then X. If nothing happens and the machine boots Windows CE as usual, BooSt did not find the card. Re-seat it, and check the write actually completed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT THE CARD LOOKS LIKE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is Psion's documented netBook Pro CF layout. MBR, signature 0xAA55 Partition 1 type 06, FAT16, bootable, 70 MB, LBA 2048 Label PSIONBOOT nBkProOs.img kernel + initrd; the exact name BooSt looks for README.TXT Partition 2 type 83, ext2, 906.5 MB, LBA 145408 Label PSIONLX The root filesystem. Verified with e2fsck, no errors. /home/lx is uid/gid 1000 -- the desktop will not start otherwise, which is worth knowing if you modify the card. There is deliberately NO nBkPro.img on the boot partition. That file is the LX prototype's NAND partitioning script; BooSt runs it automatically if it is present, and on a standard 32 MB machine it erases the internal flash and leaves Windows CE unable to reinstall. If you obtain a PsionLX card from anywhere else, check partition 1 and delete nBkPro.img before booting it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USING THE WHOLE CARD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On a card larger than 1 GB the extra space is unused. To claim it, grow partition 2 with your partitioner of choice, then: sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdX2 && sudo resize2fs /dev/sdX2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT YOU SEE WHEN IT STARTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- X with Matchbox in Psion's own theme. The Psion watermark down the left edge. Down the right, the TODAY / PROGRAMS / TASKS strip, with the red power button at its foot -- that suspends the machine. It starts on the Today screen. The checkbox at the foot of it turns that off. The 48-pixel dock along the bottom, left to right: Desk show desktop Docs My Documents Email balsa 2.2.2 (Psion's build) Web Firefox 1.0 (Psion's build) Word AbiWord 2.0.11 (Psion's build) Sheet Gnumeric 1.3.93 (Psion's build) Calendar gpe-calendar Contacts gpe-contacts Other everything else ---- spacer ---- card ejector eject.sh <-- DO NOT TAP THIS, see below volume minimix battery mb-applet-battery clock gpe-clock (analogue) That trailing group is Psion's own psion.mbdock order, byte-identical to the file in their build tree. DO NOT TAP THE CARD EJECTOR. Psion's eject.sh ends with "/etc/pcmcia/ide stop hda". On their NAND-booted machine hda was the CF slot; on this CF-booted image hda IS the root disk, so it unmounts the filesystem you are running from. It is installed verbatim because it is Psion's own file, and it is left alone rather than silently "fixed". PROGRAMS has the rest: Calculator, Sketch Pad, To-do list, Text Editor, Image Viewer, Files, Instant Messenger, Remote Desktop, My Network, Media Player, PDF Viewer, Solitaire, Terminal, Data, Jotter, Bombs, Record, Play, Time, Internet Dialler and Control Panel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LOGGING IN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no login prompt. The lx user has an empty password and the session starts automatically, which is how Psion configured it. For a shell, use Terminal from the Programs screen, or connect over the network with ssh (dropbear is running).