Well, my flash disk most often goes when I'm reading email. I
have usually been trying to delete one messsage and move on to
the next when the BN freezes. Then, after waiting two or three
minutes with no response from the BN, I do try that c 3 and c 4
reset Joseph spoke about. Then, the BN gives the long beep like
it is going to reset, but just sits there and does nothing. So,
after a minute or two, I do the c 1 and c 4 reset and when I turn
the PK back on I then get the message about the flash disk not
being available. This has happened with even as few as 50 email
in my inbox and over a meg and a half still free on the flash
disk.
----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: bob cavanaugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED],[email protected]
Date sent: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:18:33 -0800
Subject: re: [Braillenote] PK flash disk not available
Hi Bob,
Kevin knows more about this than I do, but
here's my hypothesis:
Whenever an operating system needs to access
data, it will send a signal to storage device
to prepare the data. For example, whchever
the BrailleNote needs to open the address
list to lookup an address, it will tell the
Flash Disk to find KeyList definition file
and have it ready. While the Flash is
preparing the file, KeySoft is doing other
thing, such as playing media files. When the
file in question is ready, Flash sends the
"ready" signal to the operating system,
telling it that it can now access the data on
the storage device, thus allowing a user to
lookup an address. This is called an
interrupt - a task might interrupt a device
from doing another thing and may tell it to
do something. When it is done with that
task, the device will return to do whatever
it was doing before the task in question
called the interrupt (Alex, am I right?).
This is the reason why you get some delay
when looking up an address, opening planner,
etc.
Here's a scenario that might explain Vicky's
problem: the user might have pressed the
Reset button (or the right Control keys
called C 3 and C 4) while the Flash Disk is
being accessed. If this happens, by the time
the BrailleNote returns to main menu, it will
detect that there is something going on with
the Flash Disk (from unfinished operation
before the user pressed Reset button) and
might prescht the following message:
The Flash Disk is unavailable, please press
Reset.
So my hypothesis is this: because the user
pressed Reset while the Flash Disk was being
"read" or accessed, it will create a "loop" -
where one task will repeat itself over and
over again - that will make Flash Disk
temporarily unavailable and might cause this
error to appear. In other words, the task
that was used to read information from Flash
Disk might not have been stopped by press of
the Reset, thereby creating a situation where
Flash Disk was not accessible for some time.
Here's my proposal: I'm about 90% confident
that it is something wrong with the
"unfinished" task. So, a likely solution
would be a simple Reset that might tell the
"unfinished task" to stop, thus allowing
Flash Disk to be visible again.
Er, I think my post was somewhat
complicated... I guess an experienced
programmer like Alex would be able to explain
this in simple language. Hope this post
explains a lot (or at least give you a
picture of why this error might occur).
Cheers,
Joseph P.S. I guess I should have written
this down as part of the "Five Common Issues"
article.
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