Solid State CD-ROM emulation with a Raspberry Pi Zero
This project is now complete. Writing the Wiki, which is an important part, has been completed. The source files have been uploaded
When upgrading BIOS firmware on servers (e.g. Dell R servers) sometimes the only way to perform these is using a CD-ROM. Often a bootable USB-stick is not possible, because the OS applied by the software (e.g. Dell Repository Manager) creating firmware upgrade deployments expects to mount a CD-ROM. A USB-stick just won't work. To solve this a normal CD could be burned, but well, writable CD-ROMs are not that common any more and also CD-burners are becoming more and more an exception. My long-term solution is a Raspberry Pi Zero emulating a USB CD-ROM player.
In this project are some sources to make the solution viable and, very important, an extensive Wiki how to set up the Raspberry Pi Zero
The patch for DVDs larger than about 2 GB seems to be flawed. Using Windows it seems to work well enough. Linux, however, does not read the larger DVDs, even when patched. I've implemented a new patch, but that patch is not as easy to apply as the old 'patch' and differs depending on the linux kernel sources version