Installation

With md5sum verified, I do

dd if=generic-pc-1.34.img of=/dev/sda bs=16k

following the quick start guide instructions: http://doc.m0n0.ch/quickstartpc/setup-installing.html

I can see this device in BIOS, instruct BIOS to boot first from it, and choose it in the f8 boot device selection menu on two different machines.  Each of these machines works to boot a variety of devices: this DOM with Puppy Linux on it, hdd, cdrom, usb.....

However, the most I get is an error to the effect that I need to remove disk and press any key.

There is no partition table on the DOM, which I think is not unusual after using dd.  I did nothing to "prepare" the DOM before writing the image to it; I don't think dd cares what is there.

Has anyone seen this, before?

You are writing the still compressed image.  You need to uncompress it.  It even mentions this on the page you linked.

Assuming the flash is the first disk found...

Either;
gunzip -c generic-pc-1.34.img | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16k
or
zcat generic-pc-1.34.img | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16k

Right.  http://m0n0.ch/wall/downloads.php

generic-pc-1.34.img
Type: raw CF/HD/USB drive image for generic PCs
Size: 8.53 MB
MD5: 6f642ee69a6951b8e6718996ffeb89f5
SHA256: 80710485992a0f26b3019e6323d25c10 \ e176bb5d39310f20c1f80f83db2f6328

I was thinking there would be a gz extension for a gzipped archive.  Wouldn't that be less misleading?

Thanks!

Just the history of the way things were handled.  And if it had a gz extension, people would try to unpack it before uploading the firmware to m0n0wall, and it would fail. 

“You can't make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.”
― Ron Burns

Oh, I figured I could rename and unpack it,   

$ file generic-pc-1.34
generic-pc-1.34: x86 boot sector; partition 4: ID=0xa5, active, starthead 0, startsector 0, 50000 sectors, code offset 0x3c, BSD disklabel


then use dd directly, but had no idea it would fail.  Is there some general principle why this doesn't work, easy to remember for an old guy, might keep him from going down this road again?

Just the history of the way things were handled.  And if it had a gz extension, people would try to unpack it before uploading the firmware to m0n0wall, and it would fail. 

“You can't make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.”
― Ron Burns

Actually, when I found gunzip wouldn't unpack something with an img extension, I renamed generic-pc-1.34.img to generic-pc-1.34.gz, at which point gunzip provided me with generic-pc-1.34, thence

Code:

# dd if=generic-pc-1.34 of=/dev/sdh bs=16k

and see attachment.