Explore better ways to upload cd images

[IanCassTwo]

FTP Server is way too slow (~1M/sec)

Options:-

1. Improve speed of FTP server. I've already tried and I believe it's as optimized as it's going to get. The only thing remaining is to run it on a dedicated core (which means you need at least an rpi 2)

2. Replace FTP server with a faster alternative

3. Tell users they have to manually remove SD card and place it in a card reader

4. Implement a "composite device" where we advertise both a CDROM device for the mounted disk image and a mass storage device for the "images" directory. This means you can copy images onto the device from the host. The problem with this is that the host might be an old retro pc and the images might be on your modern pc

5. Implement some other way to write to the device, e.g. mount a "blank disk" & use image writing software to "burn" the image to a "cdrom"

[danifunker]

I think the networking suite on circle might be the root of our slowness for file transfers, It's possible for us to extend the webserver temporarily just to see how quickly we can download from it to give us a bit of a benchmark. The Linux version of USBODE is able to push about 4MB/s which is still fairly slow for transfers, but would take a 650MB disc about 3 minutes to transfer, whereas it currently takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes on the circle version.

Idea #5 is a great idea for getting data out of a retro computer, but I don't think that is the best way to write images in general.
Can we spin that out into a new item in the backlog for later? Some folks have requested that capability in the past, and that would be a very unique feature to add.

Idea #3 is always available, so we just need to provide instruction to the user.

All that said:

I would like to focus on idea 4, but toggle between CDROM and Mass storage mode. This is currently how USBODE works and establishing this feature would bring it closer to feature parity.

I believe we should focus on getting this working on the existing FAT32 partition setup, and try to present the the /images folder as the USB device that gets pulled up once connected to a system. This will probably require plugging the device into another system but I believe that is acceptable.

[IanCassTwo]

Idea #4 is a non-starter. Whilst we can create a composite device, we'll get massive filesystem corruption because both the host computer & USBODE itself will have the filesystem mounted and will be reading/writing files. This will end badly. The best we can do here is what I've already started on - a mode switch where we reboot into a mode where we appear to be a USB memory stick.

[terinjokes]

There's also the Media Transfer Protocol, which I've seen used for arbitrary file types (eg, with Android). As a composite device it would allow CD emulation while still allowing for some file management.

Downside, of course, is poor support in operating systems before Vista. I see discussions online that have successfully installed the "Windows Portable Device Media Transfer Protocol" driver as far back as Windows 98.

[heartpolik]

It would be great to have the ability to enable USB mass storage mode directly from the device menu or turn on with some button pushed (like boot mode).