Chapter 4. Spectrum24 Rf Terminal Setup; Spectrum24 Terminals; Accessing The Flash Disk - Symbol Series 3800 Reference Manual

Chapter 4
Spectrum24 RF Terminal Setup

Spectrum24 Terminals

In Spectrum24 terminals, wireless connectivity is accomplished using standard
communications protocols. Because they are standard, the protocols are generalized and take
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up considerably more space on the terminal's NVM than was required for Spectrum One
terminals. Because there is less space available in NVM for application files, the terminal
operates with an additional megabyte of non-volatile memory or flash disk. This extra
memory is used to reduce not only the boot times but also the time and resources required to
load applications into the terminal. The flash disk also offers the possibility of running
multiple applications from the same terminal (refer to the section Multiple Applications on
the Same Terminal for more information. With version 3.03 or later of the system software
(LWP.HEX), the terminal can also run diagnostic tools.

Accessing the Flash Disk

The flash disk is accessed through a driver, FLASHDSK.SYS, which makes the flash disk
appear to a program as another disk drive (E:). The drive has characteristics of fast reading
but slow writing (e.g., even for the smallest files, the write process takes 3-4 seconds). These
characteristics make it ideal for files that are written once, accessed often, and seldom
updated.
We recommend that you use the flash disk (E:) mainly for application and configuration file
storage. To avoid overwriting the flash disk by mistake, the flash disk is set to read-only mode
for normal operation. The software installation or application software takes care of write/
read mode switching for you.
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