[G1 General] kwanbis:
Following the CyanogenMod Full Update Guide, to flash a T-Mobile G1 with the latest CyanogenMod, 4.2.15.1 at the time of this writing, I run into a problem while trying to flash the cm-recovery-1.4.mg.

Basically, when I tried to do: flash_image recovery /sdcard/cm-recovery-1.4.img (or recovery-RA-dream-v1.5.2.img or recovery-RA-dream-v1.6.2.img), I got this error:

mtd: erase failure at 0x003e0000 (Input/output error)

mtd: erase failure at 0x003e0000 (Input/output error)

mtd: skipping write block at 0x003e0000

I even tried (without any luck either):

mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

cd sdcard

flash_image recovery recovery.img

cat recovery.img > /system/recovery.img

If I then turned off the phone, and tried to get into recovery mode, by pressing the Home and Power/End buttons, I got into the rainbow screen, and can not do anything.

By trial and error, I was able to flash a recovery image called recovery_RC30_xda-dev_v1.2.img, with an MD5 of 8d055734022496906244b71f849a6b6d, without errors, so that, when I boot in recovery mode, I get:

Android system recovery utility Build: JFv1.42

ALT+S Apply update.zip

ALT+W Wipe/factory reset.

ALT+B Backup.

ALT+X Console mode.

I was then able to flash the HardSPL, by copying a "Hard SPL zip" file into the SD Card as "update.zip", turning off the phone, starting recovery mode, ALT+S to apply, and then rebooting.

After that, I flashed an Android ROM called JFv1.42_RC33, by copying a "JFv1.42_RC33 zip" file into the SD Card, again as "update.zip", turning off the phone, starting recovery mode, ALT+S to apply, and then rebooting.

While all was functioning fine, I still wanted to install CyanogenMod 4.2.15.1.

The problem is that the Full Update Guide states, after downgrading, rooting, and wiping, there are 3 more steps:

1) flash DRC83_base_defanged.zip

2) flash update-cm-4.2.x-signed.zip

3) flash ota-radio-2_22_19_26I.zip

and between 1, 2, 3, it says "STOP - DO NOT REBOOT YOUR PHONE".

So I took the chance, and did 1, 2, and 3. And after each flash, the recovery tool (JFv1.42) would tell me to reboot, which I did.

Basically, I had to mount the phone, copy the corresponding zip file to SD Card, rename to update.zip, turn off phone, turn on phone in recovery mode, ALT+S to flash the update.zip, reboot, and repeat, with each 3 of the zip files.

At the end, I also did the same with the the SPL_Hard_Update_Signed.zip, as it is a G1.

(Basically i did the wiki article, but substituting the recovery.img with the small one, and by having to copy one "update.zip" at a time, and rebooting)

So, while I now have a fully flashed CyanogenMod 4.2.15.1, there are still a couple of doubts:

1) Why can't i flash bigger Recovery Images? Could it be a bad memory?

2) Is there any other "small" Recovery Image i should try that allows me to select the zip and not reboot?

3) Is there a way to do the flashes using the terminal in recovery mode (ALT+X)?

4) If i want to try again to flash CM or RA, and it fails, can i just go ahead and re-flash the recovery image that i have working, or should i need to re-do all again?

5) If, lets say i want to flash SuperD, and i boot in recovery, and flash it, would it be ok, or i would need to do anything else?

Any other ideas/comments?