[E3-hacking] Understanding the E3s Partitions

[Nick Griffin]

Oh one more thing.. the USB memory stick,does it matter if its fat or fat32 formatted to copy the 6 files over to it,it don’t say in the Readme..?

Spanner..

From: Nick Griffin<mailto:span1922 at live.com>
Sent: ‎Friday‎, ‎12‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎14‎:‎02
To: Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software<mailto:e3-hacking at earth.li>

“When it flash's Linux to the E3 it only uses partitions mtd0,mtd1,mtd3 and mtd4, so mtd2 and mtd3 is not used.”

mtd0 - kernel
mtd1 - PBL ( Maybe, I say this because Uboot is flashed there.)
mtd3 - ldr ( File System..? uses mtdblock3 of mtd3)
mtd4 - Root( Root File System,maybe ?? uses mtdblock4 of mtd4)

What are mtd2 and mtd5 used for..??

Trying to find out what each Partition is used for?

Is the Amstrad Install Script running in a Ramdisk..??
You have 2 Uboot images the same, one for flashing the other on for the install so you made it a bit like FEL mode where you hold down the FEL Button and can boot into Uboot +ramdisk  from you PC thought its usb cable that powers it then you can mount the system partition to get into files and folders, that's on TheC64 Mini.
Most Developing Boards now have the FEL button.

Just trying to find out more ,it dumps the firmware into 6 partitions, when it dumps them, can they be put back the way they are or do they need to be converted, so what I am say, are they raw files so they can’t be used the way they are at the moment…?

You can backup your firmware with this script without installing Linux on the E3,you can say no to installing it, right..?? if so I will try and see if I can back the E3 up to get the 6 backup files.

P.S Have not done anything with my E2Plus yet, if I can backup its firmware and then flash it back then I can fix the dead E2s out there, but I need help.
If I can backup its firmware I am willing to share it.But don’t worry my E2Plus is going no where.. 😊 Just been looking at you page Ralph,One of the problem with the E2 is it don’t run Linux, I am trying to find out more about its firmware at the moment.
The E1 and E2 use the same Firmware and same CPU Sharp LH79531 ARM (L136 00B), the only difference in them is the Plus had ZX Spectrum games. So I might be able to use the firmware from the E2 on the E1. The E3 had a different CPU because it need a MMU for the Colour LCD screen so need to be more powerful than the E1,E2.

Spanner..

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