SDCreate

Introduction

SDCreate is a utility designed to help people with the task of installing RISC OS ROM images onto SD cards, for use with the OMAP3 port of RISC OS. If you attempt to create an SD card manually then there are many places where things can go wrong, either due to user error or operating system quirks. But if you use SDCreate to create the image for you then you can (almost) guarantee that it will boot without any trouble.

Requirements

Images can be created on almost any RISC OS computer with >8MB of spare disc space. You will need at least version 1.28 of the FrontEnd module and version 1.52 of DDEUtils. Up-to-date versions of these modules can be found in the !System archive available to download from this page

If you want to use SDCreate to write the image to an SD card, then you’ll need to be using a RISC OS 5 machine with a USB card reader and the USB mass storage drivers (SCSISoftUSB).

Alternatively, you can copy the SD card image to a Windows/Linux/Mac/etc. PC and write the image to an SD card using any number of the free utilities that are available for those platforms.

Before you use SDCreate to create an SD card image, you may need to track down some extra files/software, as listed under Generic OMAP port setup information.

Utilities for other platforms

If you don’t own a working RISC OS machine and therefore can’t use SDCreate to create an SD card image, then consult the application !Help file for information as to what files SDCreate places into the images. This should allow you to create a working card manually.

If you’ve created an image file using SDCreate, but can’t use SDCreate itself to write the image to a card, then you can use one of the following Windows/Linux/Mac utilities to write the image for you:

• Windows – Win32DiskImager
  • Just make sure the file has a .img extension for Win32DiskImager to find it
• Linux – UNetbootin
  • Or if you’re feeling adventurous, just use dd
• Mac – MeeGo
  • I’m not aware of any user-friendly utilities to do this on a Mac OS X machine, but the above instructions for writing a MeeGo Linux disc image onto a USB drive can easily be adapted for writing the SD card images created by SDCreate.

For further usage and technical information, consult the application !Help file.

History

• V1.10 – 2011/1/22
  • Added support for adding CMOS files to images
• V1.02b – 2010/11/14
  • Changed !Run file to RMEnsure FrontEnd 1.28 after receiving reports of 1.16 not working
• V1.02 – 2010/10/17
  • Fixed a bug with the step that checks for successful uImage creation
  • Corrected all filenames to be in caps, so TouchBook/xM cards actually boot!
• V1.01 – 2010/10/12
  • Tweaked a couple of bits and added Chris Wraight’s icon
• V1.00 – 2010/10/7
  • First release of the GUI version

Other

SDCreate is public domain.

SDCreate was written by Jeffrey Lee, me@phlamethrower.co.uk. SDCreate icon created by Chris Wraight.