Sunder wrote:
> Laurent Daudelin wrote:
> >
> > I don't know specifically, but I think it would be less a problem to
> >"format" the card for use by the Newton, using the standard soup structure. If that's
> > not possible, or undesirable, then maybe each file could be mapped to a
> > soup?
>
> IMHO, I'd be quite happy if it simply created a single big file eating all
> of the free space (or some - asking on format how much to grab) the on the
> card and presented that to the Newton as a block of storage. I wouldn't
> worry about trying to read the rest of the card. (i.e. a "file" on the
> flash card would be equivalent to the Newt as an entire linear flash
> card.)
>
> If you want to make it fancy, you could have the file grow as the Newt
> allocates more space on the card. But that's not critical.
>
> You could then use your PowerBook (or anything else capable of reading ATA
> Flash / Compact Flash) to simply backup your newt. It would also be much
> faster than NCU/NBU - though it wouldn't get the internal store.
>
> Compact Flash is certainly cheap enough to not bother sharing it with
> other devices, but it would be convenient to allow other devices to read
> the virtual linear flash "card" file for backup.
>
> Eventually someone could figure out how the soups are stored and write
> transfer programs, but getting an ATA driver in place is more important.
> :)
>
> That would certainly be a great start.
>
> So the real question is who has the docs needed for this? i.e. docs on
> how to write a Newton driver.
Like I said in a previous message, the software development kit to develop drivers on the
Newton is called the "Lantern DDK" (Driver Development Kit). I have this DDK, but I've
never seriously looked at it, since I'm currently involved in a Newton application, which
doesn't have anything to do with drivers.
One of the main problem, IMHO, is that there are no more Apple Newton engineer to help
out. I'm sure that the DDK is probably crippled by some bugs that were never fixed (and
won't never be fixed), so not having a Q&A specifically for driver's development, or any
other kind of help at the basic OS level could be a serious problem if you get stucked
somewhere, without any clue as to whether your code is wrong, or the DDK is.
-Laurent.
=====================================================================
Laurent Daudelin
Developer, Object Factory, Substrate Fannie Mae
Phone: 703-833-4266 mailto:Laurent_Daudelin@fanniemae.com
Fax: 703-833-7555 Usual disclaimers apply
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