Slow Loading NO NAME & TARANIS

[Frizzer]

I have a newish iMac running OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks and have had trouble since loading Companion9X several months ago. When the Taranis is turned on and passed all the switch checks to the normal running screen I plug in the USB port cable to the Mac. It takes from 30 sec. to 3 min. for the pair of drives to mount and be displayed in Finder. Once they mount all operations from Companion9X (reading and writing) are normal. Firmware load into an unpower Taranis also works fine.

Also, when the drives are ejected they take 5-30 seconds to eject and don't stay ejected. Often one will remount before the other has ejected. The is far from normal Mac performance.

Any ideas about what can cause the slow mounting and demounting performance?

Help please!

Frizzer
Companion9X Version 1.52 (revision 2395)
Taranis: SVN: opentx-r2940 (date: 2014-02-02)

[Kilrah]

We've already had such reports, and some investigation showed that without the SD card it didn't happen... but nobody really knows what causes it, and why it only happens to a couple of people. I have a real mac and 2 virtual machines, and they mount in 2 seconds...

It could relate to the fact that macs browse the disks they mount and create a bunch of extra files to store metadata before sowing them on the desktop, but it doesn't make much sense as they should only do that the first time a new drive is connected unless there have been big changes.

The disks reappearing after ejecting was a bug that has been fixed for next version.

[Frizzer]

Thanks for the quick answer!!

I tried removing the SDCARD but got the same results ... 30 sec to much longer ... to mount the disk. Naturally, only TARANIS is available to mount but I believe it ejected quicker than usual, but then remounted, as this version of firmware does.

A normal "thumb drive" inserted into any USB port loads quickly and ejects normally.

I'll have to wait for people smarter that me to figure out what is missing from the OSX version of Companion9X.

Frizzer

[Frizzer]

I forgot to ask when the next version of OSX Companion9X will be available. Do you try to wait to collect upgrades or just release when there is time to prepare the compilation?

Thanks again,
Frizzer

[Frizzer]

Kilrah,

In thinking about this problem of slow mounting of the external "disks" of the Taranis, it seems to me it isn't so much a Companion9X issue as the firmware within the Taranis itself. I'm sure Companion9X is only dealing with the disks that the OSX knows about and doesn't even have to be running for this issue to appear. Is that correct?

Frizzer

[MikeB]

Part of the problem is the USB connection can only run at "Full speed" (12Mb/s). USb memory sticks, for example, run at "High speed" (480 Mb/s).
If the MAC insists on writing large metadata files it will take a long time.
I looked into this when implementing the bootloader I wrote. I improved things a bit, but at times it just takes a long time. What I added in my bootloader was an option to disable the SD card as a disk. The 'other' disk provides access to the firmware and the EEPROM. This allows you to opt for just the one disk, and then the MAC doesn't need to mount the SD card disk.

Mike.

[Frizzer]

Thanks Mike,

I'm looking forward to the release of 2.0 and all the new features. Getting rid of the OSX remounting disk issue should make life much more tolerable.

Frizzer

[Kilrah]

The remounting shouldn't make your life harder than having to click OK when the mac moans at you for removing without ejecting...
And yes the delay has nothing to do with companion. If it does that even without the SD... no idea really.