Jeffry Loucks wrote:
Third, I'll give PalmWhomever half credit - they sorta solved the ugly 512
byte sector fiasco. So just how many DECADES have the rest of us had
blocking and deblocking figured out? How many file system failures did it
take for the rest of the known world to settle on a few working paradigms?
And somehow Palm couldn't maybe just look around a little and figure it out,
too?
So, all in all I wish PalmWhomever would stop yapping about all the
advantages of this NVFS stuff, and just admit that it's a cheap way to build
high capacity devices.
I have a theory that it's a little more complex than that. I think
what happened is that the T5 was supposed to be an OS 6 device, but
PalmOne punted at or near the last minute and decided to make it an
OS 5 device. Whether this was due to PalmOne's unwillingness to
take the risk of introducing an OS 6 device or due to OS 6 not being
ready (at the time they made this decision, which would've been like
6 months before the device hit the streets), I don't know.
But anyway, as far as I understand it (and some info on palmsource.com
supports this), OS 6 is supposed to have built-in GOOD, non-sucky support
for NAND flash storage heap, possibly even using hardware support (the
MMU, maybe) to do it as efficiently and transparently as normal computers
do virtual memory. In other words, a real, high-quality implementation
done in a way that makes sense and makes it a better device because you
can run your batteries bone dry and not lose your data.
So, I think PalmOne designed the T5 and the Treo 650 with NAND flash
under the assumption that they'd run OS 6. But then for whatever
reason, they decided to punt and make them OS 5 devices. But, uhoh,
if you do that, you have to add NAND flash storage heap support to
OS 5, since it doesn't have it, right? So, I expect what PalmOne
did is throw together their own NAND flash storage heap implementation
at the last minute so that they didn't have to redesign the hardware
of the T5 and Treo 650. And then because the project was probably
already behind schedule (if they had to change which OS it would run),
and since OS 5 was supposed to be replaced anyway, and since they
didn't have the benefit of being able to sit down and properly design
it in advance, and since doing NAND flash storage heap under OS 5 is
probably a whole different game than doing it under OS 6, it sucks.
- Logan
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