Description of the disk. Every flashpath adapter has only 18 sectors of 512 bytes. To read all the 4MB of RAM the disk is bank switched. By reading sector 1 you will find out how much RAM there is on the Smartmedia chip. Then a write to sector 2 to define which memory block you want. Read 16 sectors of data starting from sector 3 to sector 18. Internal the Flashpath has a microcontroller with which you communicate with through sector 1 and 2. All operations are performed on Track 0 and Head 0.
| Sector | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Boot sector / Status
The status "register". Only read operations should be performed on this sector. The sector looks almost like a normal boot sector and it also contains some data which can be found in a normal boot sector. On operation of the disk this sector is used to get the status of the microcontroller. |
| 2 | Control sector
A write only control sector for defining which bank of the RAM should be read or written. Internal the microcontroller will get this information and the following read/write operation on the data sectors can be performed. |
| 3-18 | Data sectors
Read/write data area. This is the actual data stored on the chip. As the device is bank switched you can only read or write 8K bytes (512*16) at the time. A chip with 4M bytes RAM will then have 512 banks of 8K bytes. |