Here is a set of step-by-step instructions to install CHDK on the SX100 for SDHC cards > 4GB which need multi-partitioning. If you are using a card <= 4GB use
Card Tricks which can format the whole card as FAT16 and make it bootable (steps 1 through 7 below) with just a few clicks. The limitation with this camera (so far; hopefully the issue will be solved) is that it will only load CHDK from a FAT16 partition, and it will only store the photos on that same partition. FAT16 partitions can at most be 4GB, so for SD cards bigger than that you will only be able to use the first 4GB with CHDK. Here's how I made it work on a 4GB FAT16 partition using WinXP, a USB card reader and an 8GB Transcend SDHC card:
1) Download
aefdisk32 and remember to where you unzip aefdisk32.exe (to make things easy you can put it in a folder that is searched for executables by default, e.g. C:\WINDOWS).
2) Start a command prompt (Start -> Run..., then enter "cmd"). If you put aefdisk32.exe in a folder that Windows doesn't search by default, you will have to navigate to that folder to run aefdisk32 (cd "C:\Full Path\To Folder")
3) Run the command: aefdisk32 X /show (X=1,2,3,...)
Each number corresponds to a physical drive, and the command will show the partitioning info for that drive. The purpose is to check which number corresponds to the SD card you are looking to partition/format. Make 1000% sure that you identify the right drive here so you don't end up messing with your hard drive by accident!
4) Run the command: aefdisk32 X /delall /nolimit /pri:4096:6 /pri:0:c /activate:1
X is the number corresponding to your SD card as identified above. This will delete everything including the partition table on your SD card, make a 4GB FAT16 partition, make what's left on the card a FAT32 partition (that neither your camera or computer will see) and activate the FAT16 partition. The /nolimit switch is necessary when trying to make a FAT16 partition above 2GB (max 4GB). For a 2GB partition, substitute 2048 for 4096 (and so on).
5) Find out what drive letter the SD card has been assigned by your computer. In the command prompt, if you run "dir Y:", substituting possible drive letters for Y, I believe it will show a message about the drive having unrecognizable format once you hit the right drive.
6) Run the command: format Y: /FS:FAT (with Y being the drive letter found above)
It will warn about non-default allocation unit size if the FAT16 partition you created is bigger than 2GB. In that case, confirm that this is what you want to do.
7) Make the SD card bootable. I used
bootable.exe for this. Unzip, put the file bootable.exe in a folder so you can run it from the command prompt, then simply run: bootable.exe Y:
Substitute the drive letter of your SD card for Y.
8 ) Copy DISKBOOT.BIN from your downloaded/unzipped CHDK package to the SD card.
9) Lock the SD card, put it in your camera, switch camera on. CHDK should be loading on startup.
WARNING: Later the same day my SDHC card died on me (see
this post). According to other CHDK users, the process of partitioning, formatting and making the card bootable as in above guidelines shouldn't be able to harm the card, but obviously there's no guarantee that the same couldn't happen to you. In case you follow above instructions and end up with a dead card too, please post your experience.
I'm hoping multipartition will become possible so that CHDK can boot from a tiny FAT16 partition (e.g. substitute 16 for 4096 in step 4 above for a 16MB partition), and then the camera will store (and your computer will see) all the photos on the big FAT32 partition, allowing > 4GB.
IF that becomes an option, then you will need to change the partition table info for the small FAT16 partition (without changing the partition itself!). This can be done with
Beeblebrox (the NT/2000 version works on XP). Run it, choose your SD card from the Disk Information drop-down menu, and in the "Type" column the first entry will then be 06. Change it to 00, save changes and close Beeblebrox. Job done! Whenever you want to add something to CHDK you will have to run Beeblebrox again, change the "Type" entry for the first partition on the SD card back to 06, unplug and plug back in the card reader and now your computer will see the small FAT16 partition instead, allowing you to update CHDK. When done, switch the type back to 00 again and you are good to go.
I am a newbie, so above description may well have errors/flaws, but hopefully it is sufficiently good to help some other newbies through. Thanks to shkin for
this post with instructions that made this process a heck of a lot easier to me (and from which I have obviously copied quite a bit here!).
