The M-Systems Disk-On-Chip2000 (DOC2000) will soon be completely supported by an open source driver of the Linux Memory Technology Device subsystem. The open source DOC2000 driver is being developed based on specifications and sample hardware provided by M-Systems. At this time, an alpha version of a writable driver for the DiskOnChip 2000 and NFTL filesystem can be downloaded for testing.

David Woodhouse, developer of the open source DOC2000 Linux driver, commented on the current status of the new driver, saying “It seems to work fine in read mode, and writing has been observed to work without trashing the NFTL filesystem. Proper error handling and recovery, along with support for the newer DiskOnChip Millennium device, should be ready within a few weeks.”

Woodhouse explains that in addition to this new open source driver “there is also a binary-only Linux driver for i386 systems available from M-Systems themselves.” “But,” adds Woodhouse, “this suffers from from well-known problems of binary drivers, in addition to which, if it is to be used as a root filesystem, it must be statically linked into your kernel, which places you in blatant violation of the GPL if you distribute a solution using it.”

 
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