BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <20091121015230.cf2c15dd.freebsd at edvax.de>, 
 Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de>wrote:

>On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:48:34 -0800, "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg at tristatelogic.c
>om> wrote:
>> But I have one question.  The author sez to do this:
>> 
>>    dd if=8.0-BETA1-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync
>> 
>> I just want to know what the effect of conv=sync and why it might be
>> necessary.
>...
>it appears that the data is ensured to be "properly
>aligned" with a possibly different block size on the
>source or target media. As far as I remember, not
>giving the bs= argument would result in a default
>block size of 512 bytes which may - but don't ask
>me why - lead to a non-functioning target USB stick.

Actually, I already _did_ ask why.