Re: New firmware for PseudoDisk / some problems

["Alex Freed" <alexf@mirrow.com>]

> > "David Empson" <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote in message

First of all, thank you, David Empson. That was it.
I replaced the string and char output functions and it works like a charm.

I was holding two payed-for boards in the hope to ship better firmware.
Now looks ready to go after a few tests.

I understand that booting by typing PR#4 caused an infinite loop. What is
less clear
to me is why cold boot failed too. Just curious.

"Polymorph" <polymorph69@hotmail.com> wrote in message
1164260874.191334.53120@j44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com">news:1164260874.191334.53120@j44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> You mention that the SD card is *blank* before
> creating the partition, but is it possible to create the FAT16
> partition on a SD card that has previously been used? (ie. overwrite
> the previous contents)

Yes. You can always format a device. That created a virgin filesystem.
I don't know if Windows will make a FAT16 on an SD card, but it is
trivial under Linux. Or OS-X.

> Can you guarantee that the newly created
> partition will be contiguous on a card that has been pre-used? I have
> no idea if this is a stupid question, but it just appeared that you
> were highlighting the fact that the card was blank prior to creating
> the partition. It would seem that if the SD card *had* to be blank
> prior to creating the FAT16 partition that this would be a nasty
> limitation as it wouldn't allow re-use of existing cards.

It is a limitation, but it is very easy to reuse a card. Just like
formatting a floppy.
I have some donated FAT implementation. Once it is debugged the limitation
will be gone. However if no assumptions are made about the files being
contiguous, it will slow "disk" operations in ProDOS mode.

>
> How are the sales going? I'm still very close to putting in an order
> (if I'm not too late)...

Sales are very slow. The first run of 20 boards will probably take a while
to sell, and I doubt I'll order more PCBs after that.

-ALex.