The fee paid for IP to embed into your own project may look high sometimes but you also have to evaluate the true costs involved. For a hobbiest that wanted to experiment with a full FAT file system on an 8052 the IP fee could look very expensive indeed. On the other hand for a serious product developer, if this capability is really needed in a product the IP fee could be rather resaonable indeed. If one were to go to the FreeDOS/32 web site and download the complete set of FAT/FAT16/FAT32 source code including long file name support and go at trying to optimize that on your own you could very easily spend significant time getting that code to run at all properly on an 8052. My guess is that the time spent would be worth way more than the IP fee for the already done code. On the flip side I have had first hand experience with purchasing some other types of IP only to find that it still takes significant time and investment of energy to embed it into your own project.

It would really be interesting to hear some feedback from somewone who has some real field experience with the EFFS-Thin.


Michael Karas