USB Mass Storage Project


Thanks. I've now increased the reading speed from the "absolute dog" speed, to "just about above pc-link speed". That's from 16kb/sec (ouch!) to 128kb/sec. Still a lot more optimisations to do, so hopefully can expect even higher speeds later on. For now, I'm more interested in getting writing to work - Shouldn't be too difficult as I've tested my smc routines seperately, and, after making a few cards totally unreadable (they will not even format!), the routines seem to work quite well now.
 
Sweet - this will change the whole way people use the GP32; it'll make taking the USB cable with you a must, for a start.

Well, unless you'll still need separate PC-end drivers, which so far as I can tell, wouldn't quite be the point...
 
Tobriand, that's the point in this project -- if it's possible to make the GP32 in windows show up as a mass storage device (like a card in a card reader), you only need drivers for win98 and below, because >nt5 has the mass storage driver builtin.
 
Well, I think you can say it's possible.

I've now increased the read speed again to 180kb/sec, and implemented writing support at 64kb/sec.

Now I know that the writing works, and is reliable, I just need to optimise it, and then I'll make a beta version for download.
 
Well, the beta should be ready Monday or Tuesday night :)

It now passes the USB 1.1 compliancy test, and I filled a card up with 128mb of RAR files, rebooted the machine, and then tested them all. Everyone one passed :)

Swapping big files between a card reader and the gp32 (and pclink) also works fine.

So it certainly seems reliable :)
 
Well, the beta should be ready Monday or Tuesday night :)

It now passes the USB 1.1 compliancy test, and I filled a card up with 128mb of RAR files, rebooted the machine, and then tested them all. Everyone one passed :)

Swapping big files between a card reader and the gp32 (and pclink) also works fine.

So it certainly seems reliable :)
:eek: Can't wait :p
This will fix the only problem the Gp32 still has left :D
 
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Does it work with USB 2.0 yet, or not quite?
(USB 2.0 compliancy, iirc, was always a problem for you average GP32 with PC-Link, so a Mass Storage driver fixing that would be brilliant...)

BTW: How fast are you aiming to get it overall?
 
Do you mean, is it USB2.0 compliant, or does it work on a USB2.0 host controller ?

Speed wise, I'm not sure. I'd like to at least double the writing speed, and get the reading speed up a little more, but I'm not sure what's possible yet as there are lots of optimisations to do.
 
It's looking like tomorrow for the first beta. Not compatible with Mac's yet for some reason (and probably Linux boxes also). I'm currently looking into that. Confirmed working on WindowsXP boxes however. Will not work under WinME, Win98 or earlier as they require drivers, so unless someone hacks/writes one, it will not work under those OSs.

So, compatible OS's so far are:

WinXP and most likely beyond,
Win2000 (Probably, not tested),
Win98/ME if you can hack up an appropriate driver.
 
This sounds great, can't wait to try it!

Just a small question, how big is it looking? I'm hoping that it's small enough to get put into a future multifw...
 
168kb at the moment, but that does include lots of debugging info and other stuff not really necessary for the final version. That's also without any kind of compression, and as a GXB (not FXE).

Don't think Mr Spiv will want it in a future MultiFW until it works on his Macs. This is what I'm trying to get working with him at the moment.
 
Upgrade! Win98 isn't supported anymore by Microsoft, and lots of other companies/people.

If you don't want to upgrade, then the only other real option would be to hack up an existing mass storage driver. The one on Firefly's webpage may be a good start :) When the program is bit more mature, I may make it possible to change the VID/PID inside the program. Till then, you can hex edit the GXB and insert the ones from your drivers .INF
 
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