woodsman, the packet-writing module of the kernel is for writing to a UDF filesystem. The thing about UDF, is that it can also show up as an ISO9660 at the same time.
The 512KB dummy.iso may be an empty file, or it may contain a bootsector which contains a partition table which covers the whole raw device. IIRC, the sizes of the two parts of the device can be changed, so obviously the U3 software is writing a new iso when the sizes get changed. I'm thinking that it may be possible to get the udftools mkudffs utility to write directly to the ISO 'device'.

piratesmack, can you post an attachment with the dummy.iso file you extracted?

I've just had another idea about possibly using some of the jffs2 tools which let you work with the raw flash device.

A while back, rworkman chipped in on a thread about the U3 devices -he had fixed his, but I don't remember how. You (woodsman) might contact him about it...

The above is in interesting idea/scenario/thought -- I was going to comment about UDF yesterday but got distracted by something.

I don't remember 100% of the details or order of events in the situation I'm about to describe, but what I was going to say was something like:

I wanted to transfer some data one time from my Linux box to my roommates XP machine (or vice versa) so took a writeable (un-finalized) CDRW that was created on the XP machine (it had some files on it) and I stuck it into nmy Linux machine, mounted it as UDF for packetwriting, and proceeded to copy some files to it (successfully).

I unmounted it, and took it back to the XP machine and stuck it into the drive. Windows opened it up, and there was the original stuff that had already been on the disc, MINUS what I had just put onto it.

Baffled, I took it back to the Linux box and mounted it again. And there was the stuff I had just put onto it, but NOT the original files that the XP machine was showing.

I unmounted it, and re-mounted it ISO9660, and presto, there was the XP files that were on it originally.

So the disc now appeared to have two distinct filesystems on it.

I haven't a clue how each filesystem might (corrupt) effect the other, nor what the moral might be here..

Just a thought.

I think I still have the disc somewhere.

Sasha

I "fixed" mine by removing the U3 crap from a Windows machine at work :/

GrapefruiTgirl, your experience points out what I found -it is possible to create a filesystem which can be recognized as either ISO9660 or UDF. When created with mkisofs or growisofs, the necessary ISO9660 attributes can be added to the UDF stuff. Most ISO's created under windows will be like this. UDF allows you to write directly to an ISO/UDF filesystem. The trick then would be to create an ISO which looks like a hard-drive bootsector, instead of like a bootable ISO image.

here:
http://www.filefront.com/14405315/Dummy.rar

Wouldn't upload unless I rar'd it for some reason.