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A few questions regarding the Matchbook adapter


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Topic: A few questions regarding the Matchbook adapter

kosir
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Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 3

A few questions regarding the Matchbook adapter

Hello all.

A few days ago I saw a Matchbook adapter sale-out, when I decided I'll buy one for my Visor dlx. Now I would have a few questions regarding the product.

What is the difference between the long adapters (that they already sold out) and the MD-100 one, not regarding the price? Which one of the two adapters was reviewed on VisorCentral?

What is VFS? Can the Matchbook adapter use the VFS on a Visor dlx?

Is it possible to Hotsync programs and other data directly onto the CF card (using just the cradle, not any CF adapter that are directly connected to my pc) or will I need to transfer files after I have synced my Visor?

How quickly can a Visor be backed up (appr. time) using the CF adapter?

Thanks alot for any info. I will buy the product as soon I get a few questions answered :-)

Regards,
Bostjan Kosir

09-22-2001 10:46 AM

Uncle Roger
Member

Registered: May 2001
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Posts: 90

Re: A few questions regarding the Matchbook adapter

quote:
Originally posted by kosir
What is the difference between the long adapters (that they already sold out) and the MD-100 one, not regarding the price? Which one of the two adapters was reviewed on VisorCentral?

Functionally, there is no difference between the "Long" and "Flush" adapters. The long ones simply had a longer connector inside the module which made the CF card stick out a wee bit. There is no difference other than this (and the price).

quote:
What is VFS? Can the Matchbook adapter use the VFS on a Visor dlx?

VFS is Handspring's (or Palm's?) standard way of dealing with expansion cards, such as the SD cards on the newer Palms and the MemorySticks on the Sony's. VFS should not work on a deluxe.

But, it does.

Dave Kessler at Kopsis has done an amazing job of getting it to work on a device that shouldn't be able to support it.

What it means to you and me is that programs that are VFS-aware can store their data on the CF card and access it there. If the program is a launcher (like LauncherIII), then the "data" can be other programs and you can run programs that are stored on the CF card.

As an example, I have a VDx with 7.5MB of free memory. I stick in a Matchbook and suddenly Mapopolis appears, and from within Mapopolis I have access to about 3MB of maps. I can pull out that Matchbook, put in a different one, and I've got SplashPhoto and a bunch of pictures. Yet another Matchbook and I've got a whole bunch of games to play.

Note -- the VFS software is still in beta right now, but it really works, and should be going into full production release very soon.

quote:
Is it possible to Hotsync programs and other data directly onto the CF card (using just the cradle, not any CF adapter that are directly connected to my pc) or will I need to transfer files after I have synced my Visor?

You'll have to transfer files to and from the CF card yourself; hotsync does not know about the CF card.

quote:
How quickly can a Visor be backed up (appr. time) using the CF adapter?

Using JackBack, it takes me a couple of minutes at most to back up my Prism with about 7MB of programs/data (1MB free RAM). It's long enough that I don't do it before I'm about to use it, but it's not long enough that I notice.

Keith Hudson of Matchbook Products is a great guy -- I highly recommend both his products and his service. Same goes for Dave Kessler of Kopsis (who makes the software for the Matchbook).

You will probably want to check out the FlashAdapter forums on Yahoo groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/) to get the whole story and keep up on new software releases.