kreeb

The Comdial/Vertical no longer supports anyone restoring the Compact Flash drives.

There are posts that talk about using Norton/Symantec Ghost to clone a working DX-80 VM flash drive.

Few people have been able to create a working copy. I have only been able to do it using Sandisk CF cards and I don't use Ghost. I just format the new Compact Flash (FAT 16) and copy the required files and directories. All of the one's that I have created will boot but only the ones that worked correctly in the DX-80 VM board were done with Sandisk CF.

My DX-80 Voice Mail that I have installed in my home unit is currently using a 512meg CF and works just fine.

I suspect it has to do with the flash memory controller built into the Compact Flash. Not all Compact Flash is created equal...

If you don't know what you are doing, it is usually less expensive to purchase a working CF with the software installed. I have seen them for sale for @ $100.00.

If you can't find a working replacement CF, send me a PM and I will see if I can help you.

norteltx

The CF manufacturer has nothing to do with it. I restored 2 mails this weekend with Kodak CF cards. I've used Sandisk, Kodak, Fuji, etc CF cards. You don't use Ghost for CF restoration..it was used for early HARD DRIVE versions. You have to use the Windows self extracting rebuild file and run the executable.

kreeb

The problem is that if you do not have the Comdial VM restoration software which Comdial no longer has available for download. I used to have it and was not too concerned about making sure that I kept an archive copy because I could just re-download it from CCC any ol' time I needed it(silly me). So if you don't have the software, and if no one who has a copy is willing to share it with you, you are out of luck. (Unless you have access to a working DX-80 VM CF and know a little bit about PCs and DOS)

I currently have two flash cards that I have never been able to make work in any DX-80 VM. One of them is a Memorex and the other is some no-name. The one thing they both have in common is that they were built by Samsung or use Samsung's Compact Flash Controller and Firmware.

When they are used as the boot device in a PC and initialized by the BIOS the are identified as 'Samsung CF/ATA'. Both of the flash cards work in other applications, they just won't work in the DX-80 VM board.

I think there is something about the Flash Controller implementation on some CF that is different... speed, difference is sector/head translation or how the bit averaging is implemented.

The DX-80 VM pc board is just a PC DOS based Intel 80xxx compatible embedded processor board with a TI DSP to handle the Voice Digitization.

CF is an ATA solid state hard drive with a 100,000 minimum r/w cycles per bit. So if you wanted to, you actually could use Ghost provided your computer treats the CF as a hard drive and not as removable media. (Some computers 'know' that it is not a 'real' hard drive.)

The OS is just PC-DOS v6.22. If you plug the DX-80 VM CF into a CF-IDE adapter and attach it as the Boot Drive in your PC it will boot the PC to DOS and you get a menu on a blue screen that tells you to:

Press 1 to run Voice Mail
Press 2 to Exit to ROM DOS.

Yes, it is way simpler if you have the program that CCC used to have available for download. But, I no longer have the program so I figured out another way.

If anyone has the Comdial flash VM recovery program and is willing to share... (hint, hint), I would not turn it down and I would darn sure keep a copy in my software archive.