For your information HCC-Embedded have released a development board 
for the MSP430 which comes with demo programs for creating reliable 
file systems in the internal flash, external serial flash and also PC 
compatible with MC/SD card system using minimal RAM.

Also with the demo board is HCC's uCDrive software so you can connect 
your MSP to PC and it appears as a standard pendrive. Use your 
favourite editor to configure, drop wav files to it. Automatic 
synchronization and also use our bootloader to drop your new binary to 
the drive - safe reliable product upgrade.

For details visit www.hcc-embedded.com

Any questions please ask....

Dave Hughes
HCC-Embedded

On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 11:59 +0000, davehcc wrote:
> 
> For your information HCC-Embedded have released a development board 
> for the MSP430 which comes with demo programs for creating reliable 
> file systems in the internal flash, external serial flash and also PC 
> compatible with MC/SD card system using minimal RAM.
> 
> Also with the demo board is HCC's uCDrive software so you can connect 
> your MSP to PC and it appears as a standard pendrive. Use your 
> favourite editor to configure, drop wav files to it. Automatic 
> synchronization and also use our bootloader to drop your new binary to 
> the drive - safe reliable product upgrade.
> 
> For details visit www.hcc-embedded.com
> 
> Any questions please ask....

OK, can do! :)

1) Are there any royalties to be paid if the uCDrive code is included in
a commercial product?

2) What additional hardware is required to interface with a USB port?

3) Can other SPI-based memory devices (such as Atmel DataFlash or ST
MP25-series flash parts) be used instead of SD/MMC?

4) How fast is the f_write function? Is it fast enough to allow
low-bandwidth (8Ksamples/sec) audio to be written to the media in real
time?

Thanks,
Dave

> 1) Are there any royalties to be paid if the
uCDrive code is 
included in
> a commercial product?

Above 10,000 units.
> 
> 2) What additional hardware is required to interface with a USB port?
> 
The board has the TUSB3410 chip on it - this can be directly connected 
to the serial port - the dev boad has addtional multiplexors but this 
is just because of its multi-functinality.

> 3) Can other SPI-based memory devices (such as
Atmel DataFlash or ST
> MP25-series flash parts) be used instead of SD/MMC?
> 
Yes - we include failsafe filesystems for Atmel Dataflash and SST 
serial Flash. ST Dataflash wil also work just fine.

> 4) How fast is the f_write function? Is it fast
enough to allow
> low-bandwidth (8Ksamples/sec) audio to be written to the media in 
real
> time?
Currently we can only record to ther internal flash of the MSP430 and 
then copy it out tothe file system. It is touch and go as to whether 
it is possible to record to the external file systems directly - we 
will do some experiments in the forthcoming weeks to see if this is 
possible or not. The issue is mostly with how to organise the DMA. 
Playback from wav files stored to the external flash file systems (SST 
and Atmel) works fine.  

> 
> Thanks,
> Dave