Practical book helps developers apply USB-interfaced mass-storage devices
By Dan Strassberg, Contributing Technical Editor -- EDN, December 6, 2006
In technical writing, clarity is the name of the game. As someone who writes technical prose, I greatly admire Jan Axelson; she knows better than almost anybody else how to write clearly and how to explain complex technical issues so that her audience can understand them with minimal frustration. She has written many books on embedded-system topics, including USB Complete Third Edition (ISBN13 978-1-931448-02-4). Like her earlier books, her latest, USB Mass Storage: Designing and Programming Devices and Embedded Hosts (ISBN: 1-931448-04-3), aims at a person with a full plate of development work and looming deadlines who needs examples of practical ways to solve real and common problems.
The $29.95, 287-pg paperback is a guide to designing and programming devices that implement storage functions, including devices that transfer data through the USB interface. Storage devices include drives of all types as well as many cameras, data loggers, and other devices that perform dedicated functions. Using flash memory and other current technologies, even the smallest devices can store lots of data. The book shows how to choose storage media, how to interface the media to a microcontroller or another CPU, and how to write device firmware to access the media and use USB to transfer data to and from storage. A comparison of media types helps in selecting media for a project. The media that Axelson considers include hard drives and flash-memory cards, such as the MMC (MultiMediaCard), SD (Secure Digital) Card, and CF (CompactFlash) cards. You will also learn what's involved in developing an embedded host that accesses off-the-shelf USB drives.
Covered protocols include the bulk-only transport protocol for the USB mass-storage class, SCSI (small-computer-system-interface) commands that USB mass-storage devices support, the MMC commands and SPI (serial peripheral-interface) protocol that MMCs and SD Cards support, and FAT (file-allocation-table) systems for accessing files and directories. Code examples show how to implement the protocols. To complement the book, Axelson maintains a Web page with links to articles, program code, and other links of interest to USB mass-storage developers.
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exellent
aydi - 2009-3-3 08:43:00 PST -
We have fixed the typo in the URL. Thanks!
Matthew Miller, Executive Editor, Online - 2006-11-12 10:53:00 PST -
URL MIS-TYPED... Try www.lvr.com/mass_storage.htm
Douglas Beattie - 2006-8-12 11:31:00 PST
