How to use BaseKits

[OffUrRcker]

Yes, it's a problem with the restructured partition table No2Chem uses. Many people have asked, in his thread, but nobody has responded to any questions about the partition table, so we do not know how to build roms from baskekits until No2Chem responds to someone. Literally, like 11 people have asked. Everyone just ignores us.

[NexVision]

It's not a question of ignoring you guys its a matter of the process being a major pain in the *** and with nothing set in stone right now it is not worth the effort to make the tools and teach people the methods when it can change at any moment as things are being experimented with. no2chem has released a super clean version with UC installed so u can customize it. I have also created fully loaded roms also with UC which are based off of 5051 as well to give u guys more options. Oh yeah and since u guys are giving no2 so much slack has anyone tried ripping dcd's latest you have no luck there either and he did that well before no2. SO BASICALLY BE PATIENT EVERYTHING WILL BE IN YOUR HANDS WHEN IT IS READY.

[OffUrRcker]

Uhm DCD releases his builds as kitchens as well, so why would anyone have tried to unpack the rom and create one themselves? I have 2.3.2 running on my phone right now, I used the kitchen and applied the vzw customizations, this is my issue, it's why I can't just install no2's rom, and I need to create a kitchen.

[SiGGy]

I started to work with no2chem on the issue but still have some lose ends I'm still trying to piece together.

The files I'll be referring to are "nk.fat" (orignal image) and the "os.nb.payload" (new image).

In those files the partition info ends at 0x200. The "55-AA" you will see is the end of sector terminator.
Partitions are done in 16 byte segments. Split them up (as I did below) But for now just contentrate on the last 8 bytes.

The last 8 bytes are split into two segments. 1st segment (4 bytes) is the sector offset. 2nd (4 bytes) is the total size of the partition.


Here's an example from the 5050 ROM.

**NOTE** All of partition data is little-endian! So for example 3e-51-01 is really 01-51-3e in terms of being a real number. If you don't know what that is you shouldn't be trying to fix this.

nk.fat (original)         sector start    size of part.
------------------------------------------------------
00 02 01 19 23 3f 01 33   02 00 00 00    be 0c 00 00
00 00 01 34 25 3d 41 c0   c0 0c 00 00    00 60 00 00 
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   00 00 00 00    00 00 00 00 
00 00 41 c1 04 3d c1 30   c0 6c 00 00    3e 51 01 00

The 4 Partitions are in order from top to bottom.

[xip1] - [imgfs] - [blank] - [storage]

Here's a example of a *broken* .nb file created that errors on NBmerge.

os.nb.payload              sector start    size of part.
--------------------------------------------------------
00 02 01 19 23 3f 01 33    02 00 00 00    be 0c 00 00 
00 00 01 34 25 3d 81 3c    c0 0c 00 00    42 7e 00 00 
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    00 00 00 00    00 00 00 00 
00 00 41 c1 04 3d c1 30    c0 6c 00 00    3e 51 01 00

The all 00's partition is null (empty) ignore it.

Partition starting sectors are based on the size of the previous partition.

For example look at partition 1 it starts at sector "02" and has a size of "0cbe".
So in base16 02+0cb3=cc0. Note the starting sector for partition 2 is "0cc0" as it should be.

1st thing that I notice here is look at the starting sector for partition 4. It's wrong (if the partition 2 size is correct)
You can see based on the original ROM the sector start data just got moved across.

The starting sector for partition 4 should be partition 2 sector start + partition 2 size. Or ...

0cc0+7e42=8b02

So the starting sector for partiton 4 should 8b02 (or 028B little-endian)

I've tried this and it doesn't fix it. While the error goes away with nbmerge...

Partition 0: start sector: 0x00000002, total: 0x00000cbe
               first used: 0x00000002, used:  0x00000929
Partition 1: start sector: 0x00000cc0, total: 0x00007e42
               first used: 0x00000cc0, used:  0x00007e29
Checking OS.nb for bad NAND block marker
Checked 0x8b02 sectors successfully!
Done.

The 4th partition doesn't show up.

So perhaps it's a fixed size for partition 4 and now it's out of bounds because partition 2 is larger. So subtract the difference between them.

Original size for partition 2= 6000 new size = 7e42.

7e42-6000=1e42

So subtract size difference from partition 4 (01-51-3e) ...

1513e-1e42=132FC

I tried this as well... no luck.



This leads me to believe that the partition 2 size is incorrect. Or perhaps I need to adjust the starting CHS values and ending CHS values in the 1st 8 bytes of the partition header. You can see that it does change for partition 2 when it grows above.


I've only had 2 hours or so to screw around with this so far this week... I'll try again tonight. (I had family visiting at my house all week; I finally have free time now... well after I'm done shopping with the wife today. I'm getting yelled at to leave now)


I used these links to reference partition header information.

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/as...PartTables.htm
http://ata-atapi.com/hiwtab.htm

p.s.

no2chem I was trying to send you a PM with this info but your mailbox is full

[SiGGy]

Hmm, no comments... I was hoping to screw with this again tonight but we have guests comming over now boo... If anyone has any input I'd love to hear it. Perhaps no one is reading this thread.

[vetvito]

I was going to look in to it, but I have a Statistics Class, so I don't want to look at anymore numbers. Quick Fix, use DCD xip.

[SiGGy]

Originally Posted by vetvito

I was going to look in to it, but I have a Statistics Class, so I don't want to look at anymore numbers. Quick Fix, use DCD xip.

Ya, or just use DCD kitchen...

[a1jatt]

filler
filler

[SiGGy]

Originally Posted by vetvito

I was going to look in to it, but I have a Statistics Class, so I don't want to look at anymore numbers. Quick Fix, use DCD xip.

I do love my Saturday statistics classes

I was hoping someone else would have chimed in with how to fix it by now; showing me what I was missing. Sarcasm runs high around here I guess... I honestly haven't had much time to mess around with it.

Interesting the DCD XIP would fix it. I haven't tried that; I just used DCD's kitchen instead when I ran out of time to mess with it.

I didn't gather no2chem knew exactly what was going wrong with the imgfstools at the time when I asked him either...

[jeepers128]

What Kitchen does No2Chem use to make his? He has to start somewhere.