VisorCentral.com - The best of both worlds?

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-- The best of both worlds? (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=16770)

Posted by dvIceT on 07-10-2001 07:47 PM:

The best of both worlds?

Here's a thought:

If PI Technology's MemPlug CF is just a take off on Dave Kessler's flashadapter design, as has been speculated in the Yahoo flashadapter forum, and is electrically compatible with it, couldn't we buy the MemPlug CF, buy Kopsis' software, then we would legitimately have both MemPlug's support and suite of software(PiDirect, GMovie, etc.) and Kopsis' support, VFS and otherwise?

I'm not sure either would be too crazy about the idea, and I'm not even sure they *are* electrically compatible. Does anyone have definitive word either way?

Posted by recordond on 07-10-2001 07:49 PM:

Yes, this would be the case. The Mempug and other devices like it are the same as Dave Kesslers flashadpater. He says this on his page when he tells you that if you don't want to build one you can buy one.

--David

Posted by dkessler on 07-11-2001 01:42 PM:

Re: The best of both worlds?

quote:
Originally posted by dvIceT
If PI Technology's MemPlug CF is just a take off on Dave Kessler's flashadapter design, as has been speculated in the Yahoo flashadapter forum, and is electrically compatible with it, couldn't we buy the MemPlug CF, buy Kopsis' software, then we would legitimately have both MemPlug's support and suite of software(PiDirect, GMovie, etc.) and Kopsis' support, VFS and otherwise?

Assuming the MemPlugCF is hardware compatible with the FlashAdapter reference design (I suspect it is but have no evidence), your biggest problem would be "dueling drivers" [insert dueling banjos music here

]. We've already had to deal with this in the VFS beta (since the beta comes with a new version of the FALib drivers).

It's tough to describe the problem without getting too technical. But imagine the following scenario: The MemPlug drivers have read a sector (let's say a directory sector) into RAM for the drivers to use. Now the Kopsis drivers go ahead and modify that same sector. The MemPlug drivers don't have any way to know that happened, so they just keep using the copy they have "cached" in RAM. Then if they make any modifications to that sector and write it to CF, the changes the Kopsis drivers made get clobbered. Obviously there are dozens of variations on this scenario - all of them bad. The FAT filesystem is not very robust and it wouldn't take much to get the format on your CF card badly screwed up.

quote:
I'm not sure either would be too crazy about the idea, and I'm not even sure they *are* electrically compatible. Does anyone have definitive word either way?

Actually, I'd love to see people running our software on the MemPlugCF, but the only way to safely do it would be to get rid of the MemPlug software and who's going to want to do that? The best solution would be for us to create a version of our software that uses the native MemPlug drivers. But since MemPlug has promised their own VFS support, I can't see investing a lot of development time in a product that would probably have a pretty short shelf life. Now, if MemPlug wanted to license our VFS software, that would be a different story. PiDeveloper, I'm sure you're reading this

If you're intrigued by this idea, drop me an email at [email protected].

__________________
<ul><li>Dave Kessler<br>President - Kopsis, Inc.</li></ul>

Posted by PiDeveloper on 07-12-2001 10:44 AM:

Re: Re: The best of both worlds?

quote:
Originally posted by dkessler

Assuming the MemPlugCF is hardware compatible with the FlashAdapter reference design (I suspect it is but have no evidence), your biggest problem would be "dueling drivers" [insert dueling banjos music here ]. We've already had to deal with this in the VFS beta (since the beta comes with a new version of the FALib drivers).

It's tough to describe the problem without getting too technical. But imagine the following scenario: The MemPlug drivers have read a sector (let's say a directory sector) into RAM for the drivers to use. Now the Kopsis drivers go ahead and modify that same sector. The MemPlug drivers don't have any way to know that happened, so they just keep using the copy they have "cached" in RAM. Then if they make any modifications to that sector and write it to CF, the changes the Kopsis drivers made get clobbered. Obviously there are dozens of variations on this scenario - all of them bad. The FAT filesystem is not very robust and it wouldn't take much to get the format on your CF card badly screwed up.

Actually, I'd love to see people running our software on the MemPlugCF, but the only way to safely do it would be to get rid of the MemPlug software and who's going to want to do that? The best solution would be for us to create a version of our software that uses the native MemPlug drivers. But since MemPlug has promised their own VFS support, I can't see investing a lot of development time in a product that would probably have a pretty short shelf life. Now, if MemPlug wanted to license our VFS software, that would be a different story. PiDeveloper, I'm sure you're reading this If you're intrigued by this idea, drop me an email at [email protected].

MemPlug CF is hardware INCOMPATIBLE with FlashAdapter.
This mean that you won't be abled to run MemPlug's software on FlashAdapter or vice versa.

MemPlug's File System APIs is open to public, any developers interest to develop applications for MemPlug are welcomed to download them from our webpage. In fact, many developers already include support for MemPlug in their latest version. eg. TealMover, TealMovie, gMovie, Noah Lite Pro, LauncherIII etc.
We are welcomed any 3rd party developers develop applications for MemPlug users.

Dave, thanks for your offer about VFS licensing, however, our team member already making great progress in VFS support. And this support will be *FREE* upgrade for all MemPlug users and support all versions of Visor devices. We will release public beta once it is available.

PiDeveloper

Posted by eeist on 07-12-2001 06:29 PM:

It is very interesting.

Kopsis want to license their VFS software but the fact is that PIT has its own ability to develop their own VFS software.

Dave, although you can't license the VFS software to PIT, you can try to license the other software! However, I don't think PIT will need your help.

Posted by dkessler on 07-13-2001 01:34 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by eeist
It is very interesting.

Kopsis want to license their VFS software but the fact is that PIT has its own ability to develop their own VFS software.

I never doubted PIT's ability to create VFS drivers. PIT has some talented developers and I'm sure they will eventually have a good VFS solution. We just figured that PIT might want to take advantage of an opportunity to license a working solution so their developers could spend their time innovating instead of "re-inventing the wheel".

__________________
<ul><li>Dave Kessler<br>President - Kopsis, Inc.</li></ul>

Posted by septimus on 07-13-2001 01:41 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by dkessler
We just figured that PIT might want to take advantage of an opportunity to license a working solution so their developers could spend their time innovating instead of "re-inventing the wheel".

Not to mentioned standardizing the code across differing platforms. We don't want "PiDirect VFS" vs. "Everybody else VFS"

__________________
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Posted by PiDeveloper on 07-14-2001 01:10 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by dietrichbohn

Not to mentioned standardizing the code across differing platforms. We don't want "PiDirect VFS" vs. "Everybody else VFS"

We will provide a standard VFS driver as stated by Palm's programmer's references.

Standards VFS awared applications should be able to run on it without modification.

PiDeveloper

Posted by eeist on 07-14-2001 03:51 PM:

"I never doubted PIT's ability to create VFS drivers"

That's why I said some impolit post before. Your post always *seem* to carry out a message < PIT can't do it, but I can >.

In fact, i am not stand on PIT side.

Posted by Euxx on 07-15-2001 08:03 AM:

Looks interesting

PiDeveloper, if VFS support going to be free upgrade, then what the reason to buy PiDirect? With fully compatible VFS driver (as you said) we will be able to run MSMount...

Could you explain advantages of PiDirect vs. VFS + MSMount ?

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