Good news from Roger Braunstein, the guy who sent a first mail without return address. He finally sent me another mail, I told him how I used mkfs.vfat, he told me how it didn’t work, he asked me about my partition tables, and I told him how I didn’t have one... *And that was the solution!*
I didn’t use any options at all when making the filesystem:
mkfs.vfat /dev/sda
That’s it. And _dev_sda is my mp3 player... Here’s the line from _etc_fstab I use to mount it:
/dev/sda /mnt/mp3 vfat noauto,user 0 0
When I mount _mnt_mp3, and ls _mnt_mp3, the directory is empty. No files.
Note that I’m using _dev_sda, not _dev_sda1! *The entire device acts as a partition.* I faintly remember that this was called the *superfloppy* format or something.
Accordingly, fdisk doesn’t see anything!
/home/alex# fdisk /dev/sda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 262 MB, 262144000 bytes 9 heads, 56 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders Units = cylinders of 504 * 512 = 258048 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System Command (m for help):
He also reported on his experience using OSX instead of a GNU/Linux system:
»The thing is, the BSD-derived fdisk is different than the one I was using in my roommate’s Fedora box. It wouldn’t let me do an interactive wipe of the partition table or anything. Furthermore, **OSX replaces mkfs.vfat with newfs_msdos**, and it doesn’t have that essential -I switch which will format the drive as a superfloppy. But I finally managed to find a way around this all:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk1 bs=512 count=1
If that doesn’t wipe the partition table, I don’t know what will 😄 Then I used newfs_msdos instead of mkfs.vfat:
newfs_msdos -F 16 /dev/disk1
It works!!!!!!!!«
Note, therefore, all ye Eratech EMP-Z users out there:
1. The drive must have no partition table! It must be used as a *superfloppy*.
2. The drive must be formated with a *FAT16 or VFAT* filesystem.
Oh, and if you want to *update your firmware*, check the Eratech site:
http://www.eratech.co.kr/download/firm.asp
#Gadgets
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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thanks for your usefull tips on EmpZ player. I thought it was dead before I read your issues. with software named FlashBoot I’ve re-created superfloppy FAT16 filesystem under win2k and now I’m happy again with my mp3 player working perfect!
– Shkoder 2006-01-10 18:36 UTC