TINY

TINY is a failsafe flash file system designed for minimal environments.  It can be used with any flash device with small erasable sectors. It is ideal for most standard serial flash parts, as well as flash-based microcntrollers with small erasable sectors (e.g., MSP430) and RAM drives.

TINY Features

• 100% power failsafe
• Small code footprint (typically 5-10K)
• Tiny RAM usage (<100 Bytes possible)
• Configurable filename length
• Directory handling
• Multiple files open simultaneously
• Standard file API
• Reserved sectors
• ANSI C compliant source code
• Sample drivers for several devices
• Detailed implementation guide
• uCDrive connectivity

TINY can be tested on the uCDrive Development Board with a variety of different flash memory modules. TINY is designed for the easy integration and configuration of new chip types. HCC provides free consultancy for adding new device types or modifying existing ones. Also available is hardware reference design information.

Supported Devices

TINY is specifically designed for use with flash devices that have small erasable sectors. Typically this means devices with erasable sector size less than 4K Bytes, although it can be used on much larger devices. TINY has been tested, verified and has sample drivers for:

• MSP430 internal flash
• RAM drive in battery backed RAM
• Atmel DataFlash
• ST serial flash for data
• SST serial flash devices

All these can be evaluated and tested on the uCDrive Development Board.

Porting

TINY is designed for ease of porting. It is tested on many target devices in a stand-alone system without an RTOS. An RTOS abstraction file (port.c) is provided for easy integration with any RTOS.  All the code is ANSI-compliant ´C´. The system has been built with several different development environments and run through a syntax checker to ensure the highest level of compatibility.  Sample drivers for different media types are included, with clear references to their hardware dependencies.  The Developer´s Guide provides detailed information on all aspects of porting and indicates clearly the areas that may need to be modified for a particular host system. In particular, the host system may provide:

• real time clock for time/date information; this is necessary if time/date information is to be stored with files that are written.
• mutexes for mutual exclusion; these are required only in a pre-emptive system.

Sample driver files are provided, for a variety of devices. These contain detailed guidance as to how to modify them for different configurations.  HCC has a wealth of experience, and is in a good position to provide customized design and development work for your project.