INSTRUCTIONS Model FMAP2: 2 MEGABYTE FLASH CARD From OPTROL INC.,PO BOX 37157 RALEIGH, NC 27627 Software by SDRFT, 1117 BRAEMAR CT. CARY, NC 27511 LICENSE All software supplied is Copyrighted to SDRFT. The user is allowed to make one copy for backup purposes only. The software may not be distributed by any means without the express permission of either SDRFT or OPTROL. No warranty either expressed or implied is given for the use of the software for any given application. SDRFT and OPTROL will not be liable for any damages which occur from the use of the Flash Card or the Software. INTRODUCTION The FMAP2 fits in the Atari Portfolio memory card slot like 128K RAM card and has 16 times the file storage capacity. The memory is organized in 64K blocks. It offers over 10 year data retention without any batteries or any other power source. Data bits are retained as static charges on electrodes encased in nearly perfect insulator. This is essentially the same mechanism as that used in EPROM. Unlike EPROM, flash memory can be erased (flashed) and rewritten electrically while still plugged into the Portfolio. The flash memory card data is also safe from magnetic fields that can corrupt data in ordinary magnetic storage media. The cards add only about 3% to the load on the Portfolio's batteries when it is turned on and no load when the Portfolio is turned off. The card can safely be left inserted continuously. Insert the card inside the memory card slot, turn on the Portfolio and reboot it. The first block on the card designated A: or the boot block boots the Portfolio and loads driver software from the card to make the other blocks of card memory capacity act like disk drive D:. You can write to and read from D: like you would RAM card while the boot block (A:) is protected and can only be written to with a special utility provided. As modified files are written back to the flash memory, they cannot simply overwrite their old sector locations because the old sectors have not yet been erased. The modified file is written into fresh sectors and the sectors previously occupied are marked "used." When the supply of fresh sectors gets low, the user can activate the Flash Clean(TM) part of the driver software which erases the "used" sectors and makes them fresh again. Flash Clean for the FMAP2 saves the active file sectors to Port system RAM, flash erases the entire memory a block at a time, and replaces the active sectors in their proper locations among the newly erased sectors in the chip. The result is fresh memory containing only valid file sectors and newly erased sectors fresh for reuse. Mass file transfer between the Portfolio and a desktop PC is very convenient using the memory card and Atari's PC Card Drive. A megabyte transfer between card and PC takes less than a minute. STARTUP: IN PORTFOLIO Plug in the card with the power off and reboot the computer with . The card has a startup program which will copy over any files needed and will modify or create a CONFIG.SYS file on the C: drive. The program will then reboot the Port and the card can be accessed. The reboot process is very important, the driver loads in information from the card when the Port is rebooted. When you insert the card it is a good idea to reboot the Port so that the driver can load the information it needs to work. If you work with multiple flash cards this is even more important. The driver loading and file checking takes about 3 seconds to complete. The supplied CONFIG.SYS may be changed but it should have these 3 lines at the start: BUFFERS=2 FILES=20 DEVICE=A:\FMAP2.DRV The BUFFERS=2 is very important. With more than this the Port will sometimes have problems when doing multiple file copies or deletions. This seems to be a problem with Port DOS V1.072. Later versions may not have this problem. Also when using fewer BUFFERS there is more RAM available for programs. The driver takes up less than 2k when loaded. The C: drive should be set to allow short term storage of working files; FDISK 16 seems to work for most purposes. When switching between different sizes of these flash memory cards it is wise to delete the CONFIG.SYS file from C: before rebooting. Otherwise the Port will be looking for a driver file not present on the A: drive of the new size card. Just type DEL C:CONFIG.SYS . STARTUP: PC CARD DRIVE The PC Card Drive is very convenient for moving large files to and from the Portfolio with memory cards. Begin by installing the PC Card Drive using the instructions and software disk which come with it. The card drive as normally installed will read the card A: drive on the FMAP2 but will not write to it or access the card D: drive. In order to read and write to the D: drive with the PC the driver PCFM2DR.SYS must be loaded into the PC system RAM. After PCFM2DR.SYS is installed an additional driver PCFMBOOT.SYS is needed to read the card A: reliably. To make the drivers load during PC bootup you must edit the PC's CONFIG.SYS file to put the lines DEVICE=PCFMBOOT.SYS and DEVICE=PCFM2DR.SYS at the end of the CONFIG.SYS file. Just use your PC word processor to edit the CONFIG.SYS file and copy it back to where you found it; in the root directory of the PC's boot drive. You must copy PCFM2DR.SYS and PCFMBOOT.SYS from the card A: drive to the root directory of the PC boot disk. When you reboot the PC screen displays the drive designations for the two drives in the card as the next two available PC drive letters. For example if the PC has two floppies, a hard drive, and a RAM drive then the PC card drive will be called E:. In this example, to copy PCFM2DR.SYS to the root directory of the boot (C:) drive you would type COPY E:PCFM2DR.SYS C: and press . When the PC is rebooted after editing CONFIG.SYS and copying PCFMBOOT.SYS and PCFM2DR.SYS to the PC root directory, the card A: drive will be called F: on the PC in the example above and the card D: will be G: on the PC. In order to properly use the FMAP2 with the Card Drive you should insert the card and reboot the PC to allow the driver to acquire file location information from the card. Reboot each time you put a different or changed card in the drive. USER UTILITIES FDINFO2 With the card in the Port type FDINFO2 and press to get information about the state of the card. Note that the utility name has an o in it not a zero. It will display the size of the card and information about file storage, used space, and free area. The file storage is the amount used by DOS for overhead and actual file storage. The used space is the amount of storage which the driver has used to move data around on the card. Used space is typically files that have been changed or rewritten. The free space is the most important part of this information; it is the actual amount of free space remaining on the card. The DOS program CHKDSK will not provide accurate information about the status of the card, it will normally report that the card has more free storage area than the it really has. Also as files are deleted from the card used area can not be reused until the card has been cleaned. This may cause the totals reported from FDINFO2 to not add up to the total of the card. CLEAN2 This is the Flash Clean(TM) program to recover all the used areas on the D: area of the card. With the card in the Port simply type CLEAN2 and press and valid files will be saved, each of the flash chips will be erased, and the files will be replaced in their proper locations leaving D: with valid files and fresh sectors ready for reuse. When completed the Port will be rebooted. See WARNING section below. FMT2 If you neglect to CLEAN when warned or some other accident corrupts D: you will need to reformat it. FMT2 will format the D: section of the card in the Port and erase all data on D:. Once the program is completed the Port will be rebooted to update the driver with new D: drive status information. To activate FMT2 type FMT2 and press . MAKEBT2 MAKEBT2 is used to create a new BOOT A: drive on the card in the Port. It will directly copy the contents of the C: drive to the A: drive. You should do FDISK 64 first, delete any files in the SYSTEM directory, and the SYSTEM directory. You then copy all the files from the A: drive to the C: drive. At this point if desired the user can delete any of the documentation part of the A: files which are already in backup elsewhere or in hard copy and can add any files wanted to be part of the A: drive. Once the Port's C: drive looks just like the A: drive is to be, type MAKEBT2 and press . The user should leave all the utility programs on the A: drive, as they will be needed for the use of the card. For safety's sake be certain to make a BACKUP copy of all the files supplied on the A: drive. After completing MAKEBT2 do FDISK 32 or less to clear C: for use and free up enough system RAM to allow CLEAN2 and FMT2 to function. If more space must be found on the A: drive then the boot files can be reduced to the minimum set which is: FMAP2.DRV, CONFIG.SYS, PCFM2DR.SYS, CKCONF2.EXE, MAKEBT2.EXE, and AUTOEXEC.BAT. This will leave 52K free on the A: drive for user files. The remainder of the utilities can be put in D: but they must be saved somewhere else before doing FMT2. PCINFO2 This will report status information about the card using the PC Card Drive. See FDINFO2 for details. NOTE: DOS based utility programs may report lost clusters, and ask you to recover these. DO NOT DO IT. This may cause data to be lost. Also do not try to DEFRAGMENT the card; it will cause the data to be lost and since the card has no mechanical parts, it will not improve the speed. No other utility programs are included for using the Flash Card with the PC Card Drive. WARNING Make a backup copy of the files supplied on the A: drive of the card. Put them on disk or perhaps on your old RAM Card just in case they become corrupted on A: in the FMAP2. Backup files on D:. Even though they are very secure and do not need a battery, there is no perfectly safe data storage medium. When formatting or cleaning be certain that the following are done: - have a fresh set of batteries in the Port, or be using an AC adapter - do not turn off the Port while the formatting or cleaning programs are running, this could result in data lose or data corruption - as a rule you should not turn off the Port when you are saving files. Wait until the save is completed. OTHER FILES ON A: AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS are the minimumm needed to use the FMAP2. You may add lines to them if you wish. CKCONF2.EXE checks to see if the Port C: drive has a CONFIG.SYS file. If not it will make one. If CONFIG.SYS exists it will add the information needed by the driver. FMAP2.DRV is the driver which interfaces the Flash Card with the Port. It is a device driver and will let the card be accessed as drive D:. It must be the first driver loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file. If any errors are found with the card they will be reported by the driver. PCFM2DR.SYS is a driver similar to the FMAP2.DRV driver used on the Port; but it works on a PC using the PC Card Drive. ERROR MESSAGES There are several errors which may be reported by the drivers: SECTOR COLLISION (write mode) The Port has tried to write to a protected sector. This should not be seen under normal use. CHAIN ERROR (read/write mode) The driver has found a sector chain which has been corrupted. The CLEAN2 program should be run as soon as possible. The CLEAN2 program will use the last valid part of the chain. This error may result in the loss of data. DISK GETTING FULL (read/write mode) When the disk has less than 64k this will appear, you may still use the card, but the message will appear whenever you save data to the card. The card should be cleaned as soon as possible. DISK FULL (read/write mode) The disk is full and no more data may be written to it. You will need to abort what you are doing and clean the card. If you are in the middle of a program and this happens, you may need to reboot the Port and data may be lost. MEMORY FULL (during CLEAN2) When cleaning the valid files in a block are stored temporarily in Port system RAM while a block is flash erased. With a standard Port, a C: drive larger than 32K leaves insufficient system RAM to hold a full 64K block. To fix this MEMORY FULL backup C: files you want to keep and do FDISK 32 or less; then CLEAN2. FLASH CARD GUIDELINES Flash memory cards can be used just like ordinary RAM cards with the following differences: 1) Never try to change the card battery; there isn't any. 2) The card is supplied preformated and ready to use. 3) The A: drive has write protected programs already on it; the big drive available for user file storage is D:. 4) Use FDINFO2 instead of DIR D: to find out about available file space on the D: drive. 5) Every file SAVE to D: goes into FRESH sectors and USED sectors will accumulate at old file locations. If you must save a file many times as you work on it, it is a good idea to use C: temporarily until you have it in the form you finally want to keep in D: 6) You must CLEAN the accumulated USED file sectors when you need more FRESH file space. Type CLEAN2 . It is convenient to use at the end of a computing session in place of simply turning off the power. Make sure batteries are fresh before doing CLEAN. It will take from 2 to 5 minutes per megabyte to complete depending upon how full of valid files the card is. The Port will then turn itself off automatically as usual. As a general rule it is recommended that the card be only kept 3/4's full. This will allow enough room for changes to files, without forcing the user to clean the card all the time. As with good computer practice, you should backup your data on a regular basis. Backing up is especially easy with the PC Card Drive. The Port utilities will not work properly on a desk top PC, and the PC Card Drive Utilities will not work properly on a Port. OTHER PROGRAMS Atari's File Manager works nicely with the FMAP2 and is especially useful when there are many files and directories on D:. Just copy FM.COM to D: and type D:FM when you want to use it. The program will automatically recognize the D: drive. By organizing files into 6 directories, each with 6 subdirectories and 6 files per subdirectory a total of 216 files can be sorted and selected with 3 successive file manager screen selections. With 100 address cards per file this would handle 21600 individuals on a FMAP2. The time to load and manipulate a file would be small as would the accumulation of used sectors from file modification. If you need to store more files than the FMAP2 can hold then file compression can be used. The file COMPRESS.ZIP available on compuserve and internet that will both compress and decompress files on the Port. TECHNICAL SUPPORT PC CARD DRIVE ADDRESSES The default addresses are assumed for the card. If other addresses are being used, contact SDRFT for information on use with other addresses. CUSTOM AND RUN PROGRAMS Custom written programs for industrial applications will work normally on the FMAP2 if they were written to treat the memory card as a disk and only modify data files as necessary. Some custom programs copy the entire program back to memory card every time any new data is added. These programs accumulate used sectors at an unnecessarily fast rate. Some custom programs are so large when loaded into the Port system RAM that there is no room left over for FMAP2.SYS to run. If you have problems with custom software contact technical support. RUN programs are limited to 64k with the FMAP2. If you need to have programs RUN off the card, contact technical support about your needs. Support may be obtained on internet robotek@cybernetics.net ftp.cybernetics.net pub/users/robotek/port on Compuserve by Email to 73677,601. Or write: Software Done Right the First Time (SDRFT) 1117 Braemar Ct.,Cary, NC 27511 PC is an IBM trademark, Portfolio is an Atari trademark, Flash Clean and FMAP2 are Optrol trademarks.