TINY usb burner project found!

[PDP-8]

In keeping with the TC philosophy, I was excited to see this very very tiny and simple usb image burner, which is currently supported and in active development.

The bzt "usbimager" on GitLab

https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/usbimager

If you miss Core2USB, you'll love this.  The fact that a verification step after burn is on by default immediately caught my eye.

The instructions of how to use it, and also comprehensive down-to-earth instructions on how to compile it (if you want to rather than rely on the supplied binaries), for a variety of architectures and o/s, was similarly gratifying.

But, like all simplified "dd'ers", it does what is told in the iso archive itself.  Hence, at this current time, it will NOT make a bootable uefi-only stick.  But it will work very well on more conventional systems, or those that have legacy/csm features in bios turned on.  For that, you'll want to burn a custom stick with directions included elsewhere on the forum.

So far I really like it.  Tested with CorePure64 11.1 on my legacy/csm boxes and bingo - a read-only filesystem that you can garner additional tools to perform custom setups to go much further if you like.  Or use as-is with external data devices, following the normal rules of how to use read-only live-usb's.  You get the picture.

[Greg Erskine]

hi PDP-8,

I have been happy using USBImager for burning piCore(Player) SD cards since February. I was even lucky enough to get a few features added to make my conversion to USBImager permanent.

In case you missed it, here is the development thread:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=265251

I am hoping for a command line interface one day.

regards
Greg

[PDP-8]

Yeah, the dev, BZT really impresses me in abiding by the KISS / Unix way. He gets it.

On the Gitlab project page, I liked how he handled pressure from users who wanted to turn a <200kb utility into some all-singing-dancing monster with auto downloads, md5/sha5 checking, multibooting and all that.

I wonder if he even knows about *core's, or uses one in secret?  Seems like he'd be an ideal user.

One thing I'd like to see is a warning to *casual* users who try to do the reverse, and make an iso out of a device - they'll quickly fill up their existing filesystem with bits if they don't have enough space.

I'm of a like mind with him - we can dd party all day long (and my penchant for chiding users not using the unix syntax, but instead using the 1960's JCL syntax using IF= and OF= pairs instead of <> redirection), but admire his desire to whip up a little dd burner behind a gui for those who aren't yet that advanced.

It's a cool util, and wish him the best for something that could turn a kids life around.