Running your own ROM

CERF emulates a whole device - the SoC, the board, the memory map and every peripheral the ROM's drivers touch. A ROM boots when that board is implemented in CERF. The same chip on another board has different RAM and flash addresses, a different display controller and different wiring, so a matching SoC is not enough.

In practice: a dump boots if its board is on the supported list. A ROM found on the internet for some other device will not.

Use the original dump - CERF runs it as the hardware does

You do not have to unpack or convert the ROM first. CERF runs the original ROM container the device shipped with. Most of the time that is an XIP or IMGFS container (see Windows CE ROM containers); sometimes it is something larger and proprietary, like the Ford SYNC 2 recovery image. In either case CERF reads and boots the dump exactly the way the original hardware was meant to.

Adding a device ROM via launcher

1. Click New on the launcher toolbar.
2. Pick New device - the option that says "Create a device from your local ROM".
3. Follow the wizard: choose the board, name the device, and point it at your ROM file.

That is it. The launcher writes the device and it shows up ready to boot.

Adding a device ROM without launcher

1. Create a folder under devices/ (next to cerf.exe), e.g. devices/mydump/.
2. Put the ROM image in it, e.g. mykernel.nb0.

3. Add a cerf.json naming the board and the ROM:

   {
     "board": { "id": "jornada_720" },
     "rom":   { "primary": "mykernel.nb0" }
   }
   

4. Run cerf.exe --device=mydump.

The board id is your device's - cerf.exe --help lists them all. Those two keys are the minimum. The configuration files covers everything else a cerf.json can carry. Both fields can also be given on the command line instead:

cerf.exe --device=mydump --board-id=jornada_720 --rom-primary=mykernel.nb0

What if CERF does not support the device I want to run a dump of?

Contribute to CE Runtime Foundation - implement it yourself.