[ale] flash memory device wierdness

[J.M. Taylor]

Look - on topic and hopefully not flamebait!! ;)

I bought a new toy - Memorex MMP8500 flash memory based mp3 player thingy.  
Bought it primarily on the assurance of someone here that it works with 
linux (forgot your name, but thanks muchly!).  And indeed it does. I can 
mount it and its little expansion card and I can write to said drives from 
my trusty RH 7.3 box.  And when I umount, it takes awhile (usb 1.1) to 
sync, and then I can remount and see all the files I just put on there, 
plus all the files from the last time I put songs on.  

Then when I turn the little blighter on in play-music mode, it only shows 
the new stuff I copied and has actually erased all the old songs (that 
were sitting there on the drive when last I looked).  So basically I 
either have to put 128mb of songs on all at once (which would be fine, but 
it doesn't seem to like this either and refuses to copy anything) or just 
forget it.

For whatever reason, dragging and dropping in windows works, but only to 
the main drive.  So I don't think it's the device.  Windows appears to not 
wait to transfer data, and I'm wondering if somehow this could be the 
issue? (sounds like voodoo to me...shouldn't matter whether it copies 
immediately or waits till umount)

Specs: 128mb built-in flash drive (unknown exactly what media) and 128mb 
SD/MMC card for expansion.  FAT16 fs, apparently.  mount -tmsdos /dev/sda1 
/mnt/mp3 to mount it.  Its big claim to fame is that it mounts as a 
mass storage device and doesn't require any software to sync up 
between PC and device.  Anybody got any clue why it would behave this way 
and if doing sync or something similar before umount would help?  I've 
no clue what the thing is doing when it starts itself up to play 
music...presumably reading the files and queuing them up to be played.  


Sorry for the rambling.  TIA as always

-- 
Jenn Taylor
jtaylor at onlinea.com

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