[Acer Iconia A500] jb_wisemo:
(I already tried a lot of searching, no success)

I am trying to recover an Acer Iconia A500, which seemed to have a bad sector in the first 4MB of flash. So after Babsector and manual rawwrite/rawread tests, I created a modified flash.cfg which inserted an FCK partition for the bad sectors between the BCT and PT partitions. However when I run nvflash --create, it hangs trying to format that FCK partition (which is just there to prevent use of the bad sectors).

Is there a workaround, e.g. some way of telling nvflash not to format the FCK partition while still creating the proper contents of the BCT and PT partitions (so I can move on to flashing the desired bootloader, kernel and recovery)?

Update: By simply trying again and again, it randomly succeeded (once) in getting past the FCK formatting. No change in config or command, just repeated tries (which cannot be good for the flash chip).

I am using the old nvflash.exe (dated 2011-11-23, size 152064, no --version option) with the following command line:

nvflash --bct flash.bct --setbct --configfile flash.cfg --create --odmdata 0x100c0105 --bl dlmodebl.bin --sbk 0xXXXXXXXX 0xXXXXXXXX 0xXXXXXXXX 0xXXXXXXXX

dlmodebl.bin (like nvflash.exe and flash.bct) is from timmydean's root-3.2.1-V4.7z

The output (from failed attampts) is this:

Nvflash started
rcm version 0X20001
System Information:
chip name: t20
chip id: 0x20 major: 1 minor: 3
chip sku: 0x8
chip uid: 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
macrovision: disabled
hdcp: enabled
sbk burned: true
dk burned: true
boot device: emmc
operating mode: 4
device config strap: 0
device config fuse: 0
sdram config strap: 0

sending file: flash.bct
- 4080/4080 bytes sent
flash.bct sent successfully
odm data: 0x100c0105
downloading bootloader -- load address: 0x108000 entry point: 0x108000
sending file: dlmodebl.bin
| 714385/714385 bytes sent
dlmodebl.bin sent successfully
waiting for bootloader to initialize
bootloader downloaded successfully
setting device: 2 3
creating partition: BCT
creating partition: FCK
creating partition: PT
creating partition: EBT
creating partition: GP1
creating partition: SOS
creating partition: LNX
creating partition: APP
creating partition: CAC
creating partition: MSC
creating partition: FLX
creating partition: AKB
creating partition: UDA
creating partition: GPT
Formatting partition 2 BCT please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 15 FCK please wait.. done!

(and it just hangs after that). The one time I was successful, it swiftly did all the partitions then flashed the various .bin and .img files as specified in flash.cfg. Output was this:

Nvflash started
rcm version 0X20001
System Information:
chip name: t20
chip id: 0x20 major: 1 minor: 3
chip sku: 0x8
chip uid: 0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
macrovision: disabled
hdcp: enabled
sbk burned: true
dk burned: true
boot device: emmc
operating mode: 4
device config strap: 0
device config fuse: 0
sdram config strap: 0

sending file: flash.bct
- 4080/4080 bytes sent
flash.bct sent successfully
odm data: 0x100c0105
downloading bootloader -- load address: 0x108000 entry point: 0x108000
sending file: dlmodebl.bin
| 714385/714385 bytes sent
dlmodebl.bin sent successfully
waiting for bootloader to initialize
bootloader downloaded successfully
setting device: 2 3
creating partition: BCT
creating partition: FCK
creating partition: PT
creating partition: EBT
creating partition: GP1
creating partition: SOS
creating partition: LNX
creating partition: APP
creating partition: CAC
creating partition: MSC
creating partition: FLX
creating partition: AKB
creating partition: UDA
creating partition: GPT
Formatting partition 2 BCT please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 15 FCK please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 3 PT please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 4 EBT please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 5 GP1 please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 6 SOS please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 7 LNX please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 8 APP please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 9 CAC please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 10 MSC please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 11 FLX please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 12 AKB please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 13 UDA please wait.. done!
Formatting partition 14 GPT please wait.. done!
done!
sending file: bootloader.bin
| 1191932/1191932 bytes sent
bootloader.bin sent successfully
sending file: recoveryThor.img
\ 4810752/4810752 bytes sent
recoveryThor.img sent successfully
sending file: boot.img
- 3450880/3450880 bytes sent
boot.img sent successfully
sending file: system.img
/ 629145600/629145600 bytes sent
system.img sent successfully
sending file: flexrom.img
/ 104857600/104857600 bytes sent
flexrom.img sent successfully
sending file: checksum.img
/ 10485760/10485760 bytes sent
checksum.img sent successfully
failed executing command 25 NvError 0x120002
command failure: sync failed (bad data)
bootloader status: Bct Write Failed (code: 22) message: nverror:0x8 (0x11000008)
flags: 0

However, the result is still not bootable (to recovery, system.img doesn't match the other parts).

The modified flash.cfg differs from timmydean's only in a smaller BCT and the extra FCK partition at the beginning, here is the new beginning:

[device]
type=hsmmc
instance=3

[partition]
name=BCT
id=2
type=boot_config_table
allocation_policy=sequential
filesystem_type=basic
size=4096
file_system_attribute=0
partition_attribute=0
allocation_attribute=8
percent_reserved=0

[partition]
name=FCK
id=15
type=data
allocation_policy=sequential
filesystem_type=basic
size=3141632
file_system_attribute=0
partition_attribute=0
allocation_attribute=8
percent_reserved=0