Would a new RAMDISK be outmoded?

[Omega-TI]

The TI market is small and I doubt if it could support multiple variants of the same type of thing. With this in mind, is a RAM DISK still feasable? It seems to me that with current technology and the skills present, the better route would be a solid state hard drive. From a speed issue, it's still fast and when power is lost you still retain the data, except during writes. I would also note that a SSHD would also have an advantage of being able to store more data.

 

Can you imagine pairing up a PGRAM (cartridge emulator) with a SSHD. Damn!

[Tursi]

SD is a lot cheaper than SSHD and easier to interface to, and a 64GB SD card is still going to be larger than you're likely to need.

[Omega-TI]

SD is a lot cheaper than SSHD and easier to interface to, and a 64GB SD card is still going to be larger than you're likely to need.

 

Actually what I had in mind was an SD card attached to a plug in controller card for the TI. I know there would be development issues, but if it can be done on a Nano-PEB with a CF, why not on a single card in the P-Box? The SD card would function as the SSHD. It sure beats buying SCSI cards, converting to IDE than attaching yet another device.... a lot cheaper too!

[Willsy]

Fully agree. Just need a PEB card with an SD card reader slot on it. The card itself would probably be tiny. No need for a full-height card. Ideally, the DSR would be able to support the FAT32 file format, that way you could drag and drop files to/from the SD card on your PC without having to use any special software at all.

 

If the DSR was hosted in Flash rather than EPROM then it would be possible to update the card's DSR using the TI itself which means the DSR could be upgraded in the field. This would mean that FAT format compatibility need not delay the release of the card - FAT file format could be added later, with programs such TI99DIR being used in the interim to move files between the SD and the PC.

[+OLD CS1]

Any SSD worth purchasing these days has a capacity far beyond necessary and is not very portable. SD cards are definitely more viable and still available in smaller capacities for reasonable prices. It also future-proofs such an expansion as SD cards are very good about backward compatibility: a TI expansion could use a Class 10 interface and work with most older cards and still work with newer cards. We would not have to worry about the lack of IDE drive, or the eventual phase-out of SATA SSDs in favor of PCIe and mSATA.

 

I suppose a DSR could be designed to be tolerant to hot-insertion and removal of an SD card, just like a Zip or floppy drive. FAT32 and exFAT would be required (off the top of my head I believe there is some intersection between the two.)