> I've been watching the IDE interface thread with interest but it looks now
> ready to stop, but leaves me with an unanswered question. What about the
> file system. How difficult is it to convert the data returned by the drive
> into a file that makes sense. Does the drive look after the linking of the
> sectors to make the file or how is all that done. In your opinion where is
> the best place to get a good explanation of the file system (my PC uses
> Fat32 - I think - must check).
>
> My reason for asking is that I have just been given a pair of 48MB compact
> flash cards with can be directly connected to the IDE - and I'm thinking
> MPEG player for the car/camper. Obviously I'd like to load the
> files from my
> PC and then be able to play them in a homebrew player in the car.

        Actually implementing the file system can range from very simple to
extrememly difficult with the resources of a PIC. I'm opting for relatively
simple approach. My drive will only have one file in the root directory, and
the PIC will only ADD to that file, so my task is relatively simple since:

1. only one file, so only one directory entry to keep up to date
2. no fragmentation
3. no worrying about long file names and deleted files

You COULD implement much more, but for my application it's just not
necessary. FWIW I'm not at that stage yet, still can't get the drive to
respond correctly to LBA mode, damn... TTYL

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