Windows CE Binary Image Data Format: What are records?

I read the "Windows CE Binary Image Data Format" section in MSDN's
Windows CE 5.0 help. According to that section each binary file is
composed of several records. What is each record? Is it a file
contained in the binary or does it have another purpose?

Steve
Mon Apr 10 19:51:32 CDT 2006

It's just a chunk of memory data. No specific meaning. Just a way to grouped
data into chunks so the it's easier to skip over unused regions.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

zvirack
Tue Apr 11 05:41:23 CDT 2006

What I would like to do is take a binary file and extract the files
that are stored inside. Is there any tool/method for doing this?

Steve
Tue Apr 11 09:14:27 CDT 2006

No, you can't take the files out of a BIN file. The BIN file is just a
Binary version of the Motorola "S" record "SRE" format which is similar to
the Intel HEX formats. There is no information about the files in the bin
format. You would need to extract the records to a raw image file (NB0) and
then work through that to get the table of contents for the ROM FS and then
decompress the data for the files. However you would find you can only get
some data files as all the MODULES are pre-linked and located for XIP and
are not real files anymore.

Why are you trying to extract files fro the BIN file. All the files in the
BIN will be located in your _FLATRELEASEDIR? I'm having a hard time trying
to come up with a legitimate reason why you'd need to extract files from a
BIN file.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

zvirack
Tue Apr 11 17:17:04 CDT 2006

Steve,

Thank you for your detailed reply.
The reason that I would like to extract the files from the .bin is that
I have to add an a new file to the .bin and I do not have the workspace
used to create the .bin. After extracting all the files I will create a
new workspace and build a new .bin consisting of the extracted files
and the new file that I have to add

Steve
Tue Apr 11 17:34:57 CDT 2006

> I have to add an a new file to the .bin and I do not have the workspace
> used to create the .bin.

That is pretty much impossible to do. You need ALL of the original files to
make a BIN file as it performs a link and locate on the XIP modules and then
adds the data files in compressed format filling in the gaps between xip
modules caused by required alignments.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com