[ale] flash memory device wierdness

[Joe Knapka]

"J.M. Taylor" <jtaylor at onlinea.com> writes:

> Look - on topic and hopefully not flamebait!! ;)
> 
> I bought a new toy - Memorex MMP8500 flash memory based mp3 player thingy.  
> Bought it primarily on the assurance of someone here that it works with 
> linux (forgot your name, but thanks muchly!).  And indeed it does. I can 
> mount it and its little expansion card and I can write to said drives from 
> my trusty RH 7.3 box.  And when I umount, it takes awhile (usb 1.1) to 
> sync, and then I can remount and see all the files I just put on there, 
> plus all the files from the last time I put songs on.  
> 
> Then when I turn the little blighter on in play-music mode, it only shows 
> the new stuff I copied and has actually erased all the old songs (that 
> were sitting there on the drive when last I looked).  So basically I 
> either have to put 128mb of songs on all at once (which would be fine, but 
> it doesn't seem to like this either and refuses to copy anything) or just 
> forget it.
> 
> For whatever reason, dragging and dropping in windows works, but only to 
> the main drive.  So I don't think it's the device.  Windows appears to not 
> wait to transfer data, and I'm wondering if somehow this could be the 
> issue? (sounds like voodoo to me...shouldn't matter whether it copies 
> immediately or waits till umount)
> 
> Specs: 128mb built-in flash drive (unknown exactly what media) and 128mb 
> SD/MMC card for expansion.  FAT16 fs, apparently.  mount -tmsdos /dev/sda1 
> /mnt/mp3 to mount it.  Its big claim to fame is that it mounts as a 
> mass storage device and doesn't require any software to sync up 
> between PC and device.  Anybody got any clue why it would behave this way 
> and if doing sync or something similar before umount would help?  I've 
> no clue what the thing is doing when it starts itself up to play 
> music...presumably reading the files and queuing them up to be played.  

You might try mounting with "-o sync" ("make all writes to the filesystem
synchronous"). I'm not certain that will work, but it's worth a try.
You're correct that it *shouldn't* matter whether writes are done
immediately or at umount-time, I think; but nothing's perfect.

Cheers,

-- Joe

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