[Yaffs] Fwd: Re: using yaffs on magnetic tape and porting to…

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Author: Tom Sparks
Date:  
To: yaffs
Subject: [Yaffs] Fwd: Re: using yaffs on magnetic tape and porting to 8-bit cpu
On 11/02/15 19:11, laurie wrote:
> On 10/02/15 20:16, Tom Sparks wrote:
>> Could yaffs be made to work with magnetic tapes?
>> Could yaffs be ported to a 8-bit CPU like the 6502?
> Mr Sparks,


<sniped>
> Yaffs handles data in blocks of a few kBytes and a driver specific to
> the type of flash chip stands between Yaffs and the flash memory.
> Tape is a linear storage medium and moving it to and fro for many
> separate reads and writes would seem very difficult to manage, as well
> as causing mechanical wear of a type not found in flash chips.
> Tape storage was widely used about 30 years ago and if I were faced with
> this question I would examine the drivers of that era.

I did look at tape drive from micro-computers and mainframes/minis
all the computer wrote data in-place on the tapes and due to the drive
hardware (think cassette deck) you could rarely write-in-place successfully
micro-computers started using blocks size from 128bytes to 512bytes to
store data on cassettes tapes, but the tapes media had to be manual
positioned to where the tape is blank

I found plans to build Phideck[1][2], a computer controlled cassette deck :)

>
> You might be able to write a driver for an 8-bit CPU; I do not know if
> it can be done. It would have to work through the Operating System you
> are using, and the File System would be very separate from it.

I am bare metal programming :)

> Good luck!
> LvS

[1]
<http://bytecollector.com/archive/digital_group/documentation/hardware/dg_systems/system_cards/storage/phideck/phi-deck_card.pdf>
[2]
<http://bytecollector.com/archive/digital_group/documentation/hardware/dg_systems/system_cards/storage/phideck/hughies_hot_tips2.pdf>