Creating Naomi CF Cards

[Zapperkhan]

So i've been going at this for a few days now and can't get them to work. The CF setup does work because the cards that came with it play with no problems.

Equipment:
PATA CF Reader
Transcend 4gb CF Cards I found on EBay

Also have 1 card that I erased and is some generic 512mb card but it previously worked.

Running on Windows 7 I can flash them but the Naomi throws up an Error 21. Read up to find out Windows 7 doesn't format FAT16 partitions correctly. So I install XP on another hard drive, but now NAOMICF just greys out the drive letter selection. Smart monitoring tools all work and I can get the keys needed. Any reason anyone can come up with why this setup is being lame? I've googled the hell out of it but can't find someone else with this issue. If I have to go buy a 10 dollar usb cf reader I can I guess since I can get the keys, but was wondering if I was overlooking something. Thanks!

 

[Tyranix95]

The last guy who had ERROR 21 had a SCSI cable problem.

His generic Fry's SCSI cable was not "Naomi" compatible.

Funny thing is, my Fry's cable is.

Go figure.

 

[Tyranix95]

Anyways, on XP, NaomiCF.exe is supposed to grey out the drive letter box for you.

It auto selects the CF drive letter for you.

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You don't need Smart monitoring tools if you're using NaomiCF.exe.

NaomiCF.exe gets the security bytes for you and then swaps them.

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A USB CF card reader will not allow you access to the part of the CF card with the security bytes. Only and IDE CF card reader will.

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Fun youtube vid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb6hP7WStSM

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Use Active Partition Manager if Windows will not format a drive with FAT16. APM should work.

 

[Zapperkhan]

Alrighty, so I just went ahead and tried more cards and it works... Still don't know why the generic one that previously worked doesn't work when I flash it. Oh well, 2 of the cards from the 10 lot I bought were bogus I guess. Thanks Tyranix.

 

[Tyranix95]

Which CF cards worked? And,

Which CF cards didn't work?

 

[Zapperkhan]

1 of the ones that didn't work was a generic one, original label was torn off, 2 of the transcend ones I linked didn't work (these were used off ebay, but they definitely worked because they still had data from a previous owner) but another 5 or so did. What's stranger is I looked at them again and I just formatted through Windows XP the whole 4gb for FAT16 and it worked with no issues. Wonder if I'll have issues down the road because of that.

Another thing, on the XP drive the drive letter of the CF was staying greyed out without a drive letter and it wasn't retrieving the security code. However, when I plugged my W7 os drive back in but booted to my XP machine, those options were no longer greyed out and the program acted as expected.

 

[lantus360]

no they arent bad cards

pipes and I went through a similar thing when i sent him some CF cards.

Tyr is correct, the problem is the sector bytes. USB will report inaccurate ones which will give you the Error 21. You need an ide/pcmcia cf reader to get the correct code. Use that code when you flash

 

[Zapperkhan]

All of this was through IDE, the get security button was working in W7, I double checked the security bytes with smart monitoring tools as well, but it still was giving me the 21. Eventually it worked through XP on different cards but the same brand. I think it took a few reboots for XP to fully recognize the IDE reader.

 

[Zapperkhan]

Quick update changed the voltage jumper on my IDE CF reader from 5.0 to 3.3 and now it flashes like a dream and no more Error 21s.

 

[myklindle]

Is there a good guide on this process? Im running into trouble my self, but after reading this think it's because i was trying to use a usb cf adapter... What kind of files do you feed NaomiCF? Zip files? Isos?