Aspiring chef, requesting advice

[nomad_delta]

'lo everyone! Been hanging out here on PPCGeeks for a little while, trying out lots of different ROMs and experimenting a lot. Finally decided I'd really like to better understand what's happening "under the hood" of all this, so I'm working on cooking up my own ROM. Not really to release or even use, but more as a learning experience.

I've downloaded a whole pile of SYS and XIP files from various places, and several of the Kitchens posted here and have looked through each trying to understand the process and the tools involved. For my initial purposes I'm starting out using the SSK 1.5 Rev C2 kitchen (Thanks Scott!) and his 21015 SYS as a base.

I've been able to run the script and build a ROM using the kitchen as is, that part's easy enough, but I'm trying to understand what all the files are and what they do, how to modify them, etc.

I'm not asking anyone to hold my hand, I'm pretty keen on figuring out as much as I can myself, but I do have a few questions if anyone has a sec:

1. I think I've figured out that .DSM files are like an index file for packages, and I see that I can view/edit them somewhat with the DSMAnalyzer.exe tool -- I can't seem to figure out how BuildOS knows what to do with the invididual files in the packages, though -- the DSM just looks like a list of all the files to me, without any indication of what folder in the filesystem they're supposed to go in. Do they all just go in \Windows by default? (I've tried searching the forums for this but it's a bit difficult since "DSM" is too short to search for...)

2. My current goal is to try to figure out what the absolute minimum files required in the OEM folder to get a bootable build on a TP are. At first I was thinking perhaps these were all optional and only the SYS/ROM was required, but when I tried to build with an empty OEM folder my TP just boots to the "TouchPro" logo screen with the ROM version info at the bottom and hangs there. I tried putting just the _OEMDrivers folder back, and the "OEM.cer" file, but still the same. I'll keep looking, but if anyone could point me at which files are essential it'd help a lot.

3. On that note, what's the OEM.cer certificate file for exactly and where does it come from?

Cheers, and thanks in advance for any tips/advice. I'm having all kindsa fun playing around with this & seeing what sort of trouble I can get into. :P

--nomad_delta