Freeing up storage space

[G8B4Life]

Just wondering if anyone has queried Ring about this before I take the question to him

The HC-x and HC Sim appear to be acting a bit like garbage collectors in that while we can delete pictures, sounds and light effects that get downloaded into them, we cannot delete product programs or accessory projects. These things take up space and if they hang around in the storage that's space we don't get back, which with storage space always at a premium is not that good of a situation.

I can understand the idea of always having the latest revision product program for things like LM's in the HC storage, but what happens when a new revision program for an LM comes out, does the old one remain in storage as well after you download the new one?

With HC Sim you can can at least get that space back by re-installing HC Simulator but you can't re-install an actual HC-x.

- Tim

[PatP]

Tim,

Did you ever follow up on this and get an answer from Ring? While my stuff is new enough this is not an issue but, sometime in the future it may.

Thanks, (I know this is an old post)
PatP

[G8B4Life]

Hi Pat,

Yes I did and yes I did. I listed both issues here as bugs. https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,369.msg2826.html#new

Basically the response I got was yes we confirm it and if there's enough want we'll look into adding deletion for them.

So, Accessory programs cannot be deleted from the HC-x or from HC Simulator. Accessory programs are very small in size but even so they still take up 1000 bytes of storage space, even if the program is only 50 bytes in size.

Product programs cannot be deleted from the HC-x or from HC Simulator. Old versions are overwritten with newer versions when a new version is downloaded (although if I stretch my memory I was able to demonstrate that did not happen once or twice. I might try that test again tomorrow). Product programs take up a fair bit of space (at work so I don't have any figures right now) so it would not take a whole lot of them to start being a nuisance with the amount of space they take up, especially if you didn't have the product that the program belonged to.

I now use only HC Simulator for downloading and copying, I can at least manage the storage file on my PC whereas managing the storage on the HC would take writing software for it.

- Tim

[PatP]

Thanks Tim,

I also started using HC Sim once I figured out how quickly the storage space disappeared, and figured out how to delete unused sounds, etc., which is what I assume you're calling product programs, from the HC-2s. One of my HC-2s had gotten down to 22% storage space left, I've got 2 locos running with RP, and was trying different engine and horn sounds. At one point HC Sim told me it was out of memory so, it is nice to be able to clear them back out, mostly. (the GEVO sound file took 30% of the HC-2s space)

I had read your post and just got to wondering. Hmm, allocates 1k blocks, interesting...

Thanks again for the response,

PatP

[nodcc4me]

Pat, the product programs refer to the software version upgrades occasionally released by Ring, which are not removable. The prime movers and other sound files take up most of the available memory on the HC and in the modules. As they continue to improve, we will have less memory space available, requiring deletion of files to add others. Each new version of the LMs has more memory than the previous version.

Hmm...sounds like an HC-3 may be required soon.

[G8B4Life]

Pat, the product programs refer to the software version upgrades occasionally released by Ring...

Correct. These are basically the operating system of the devices if you want to think of them that way, and once downloaded into a HC-x or HC Sim they cannot be deleted. It's not a huge problem per se, They are smaller than I remembered and they aren't that big by themselves but if your downloaded all of them then you might loose several precent of storage space (I did actually download them all for a test, I'll see how much space you loose). More so you loose a slot to download something else. There is a maximum of 125 slots available in storage, which quite a few are lost to the HC-x and HC Sim programs themselves.

I ran my tests again and there is no doubling up of product programs in storage when you download a new revision, the second copy that's present is overwritten with whatever you download next.

More storage space would be handy. For the Handheld controller and other devices that possibly would require new hardware versions (not just putting a higher capacity memory chip on without changing anything else; Alan would know better than I, he's familiar with stuff like that) but there is no reason there can't be more storage space in HC Sim; it'd be trivial do at the programming stage. I did it afterwards and it wasn't that hard then.

- Tim

[PatP]

Thanks Tim,

Sounds like Ring is doing code replacement as opposed to patching. Replacement is just that, overwriting existing with the new while patching leaves the original code but redirects the buggy part to the new. With replacement, the code may or may not change in size, depending upon the bug being replaced. This is old school stuff. Neat, compact and clean. Just another reason to be impressed with RP.

PatP

Yeah, yeah. I know just enough to be a nuisance. Did some beta testing, and a little programming, in the 80's and early 90's, before the software companies turned it into a marketing scheme, and the major programs went over 100k lines of code.