Re: [NTLK] Ejecting cards

>Is there a specific way cards should be removed? Right now I press
>plastic eject button on the side of the MP and the Newton tells me I
>have to reinsert it since one software or another needs the card. I
>then reinsert the card and can then remove it. I can't find a place
>on the NOS to click "Unmount card" or something so that this doesn't
>happen.

< some details have been glazed over to protect the innocent, please
only flame if you have something valuable to add>

Back in the old days we had a situation known as "The Grip of Death"
where you eject a card and the Newt would bit*h that the card was
still required, pretty much what you are seeing.

The Newton stores data in a structure called soup that is like a
relational database. The soup entries in the internal Flash Memory of
the Newt are intermingled (unioned) with the soup entries on your PCMCIA cards.

When you eject the card, a message is sent to all of the applications
telling them that the card is being ejected and they should release
their hooks into the soups. This causes the OS to terminate programs
running off of the cards, the programs to release their
soups...whatever is necessary.

The problem comes up when you have a program that was either not
tested properly, poorly implemented, or has lost its mind. When the
OS tells everyone to let go, someone is not listening and still has
its ugly mitts on the card. The same sort of thing happens to Windoze
when you eject a card, if files on the card are still open Windows
bit*hs that the card is busy. On the Newt it was implemented properly
and you don't have to dig around in some obscure icon, you just push
the button and the OS takes care of the rest (as long as the
programmers have followed the rules).

Andrei

>Tovi

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