Datalight is a privately held software company specializing in power failsafe

and high performance software for preserving data integrity in embedded

systems.[3] The company was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, and is
headquartered in Bothell, Washington.

Datalight

Type Private[1]

Industry Computer software

Founded Bothell, Washington, U.S. (incorporated 1983)[2]

Founder Roy Sherrill

Headquarters Bothell, Washington, United States

Products Reliance, FlashFX, XCFiles, ROM-DOS

Number of employees 29[1]

Website datalight.com

Overview and history

Datalight was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, a former Boeing engineer.[4][5]

Datalight's initial products were two DOS applications: the Datalight Small-C
compiler and the Datalight C-Bug debugger. A full C compiler named Datalight
C was available from Datalight between 1987 and 1993; Datalight C,
developed by Walter Bright, evolved into Zortech C and is now Digital Mars
C.[6][7][8] Datalight C was also developed into an optimizing compiler called
Datalight Optimum-C, which later became Zortech C++, the first native C++
compiler.[9][10] In 1988, Datalight released C_thru_ROM, which provided
embeddedable C functions and C start-up code, allowing programs developed
on DOS to run as standalone applications without DOS dependence.[11][12] In
1989, ROM-DOS 1.0 was released.

CardTrick was announced in 1993 to support the flash memory being built
into PCMCIA cards. CardTrick later evolved into the embedded flash memory
manager FlashFX in 1995, moving Datalight into the raw flash memory
market. The company grew rapidly in the late 1990s, receiving the WA Fast 50
award for the fastest growing companies in Washington state in 1997 and
1998.

The first of four patents to eventually be assigned to Datalight, "Method and

apparatus for allocating storage in a flash memory",[13] was awarded in 1999,
followed up with an additional FlashFX-related patent, "Method and system
for managing bad areas in flash memory",[14] in 2001. In 2003, Reliance, a
reliable transactional embedded file system, was released; a related patent,
"Reliable file system and method of providing the same",[15] was awarded in
2007. In 2013, another file system related patent, "Method and Apparatus for
Fault-tolerant Memory Management"[16] was issued.

In 2009 Datalight released FlashFX Tera to support the growing size and
complexity of NAND flash arrays. That same year, Reliance Nitro was
released, building upon Reliance and adding a tree-based architecture to
improve performance for large files (>100 MB) and large numbers of files.

Products

Reliance family
Reliance

First released in 2003, Reliance is an embedded file system[17] designed for

applications with high reliability requirements.[18] Key features:[19]

Provides immunity to file corruption, including after unexpected system

interruption (e.g., power loss), via atomic transaction points.

Does not need to check disk integrity at start-up, meaning a shorter boot time.

Dynamic file system configuration for performance optimization.

Full data-exchangeability with Microsoft Windows, via the Reliance Windows

Driver.

Reliance has a maximum volume size of 2 TB and a maximum file size of
4 GB.[20]

Reliance Nitro

Released in 2009, Reliance Nitro is a file system developed from Reliance; it

improved on the performance of original Reliance, primarily by adding a tree-
based directory architecture facilitating faster look-ups. The maximum
volume size on Reliance Nitro is 32 TB; maximum file size is constrained only
by free space.[21]

Reliance Windows Driver

Datalight provides Windows drivers for both Reliance (Reliance Windows

Driver; RWD) and Reliance Nitro (Reliance Nitro Windows Driver; RNWD); they
provide exchangeability between Reliance-formatted media and Microsoft
Windows. Both support Windows Vista and Windows XP; an older version of
RWD supports Windows 2000. The drivers are bundled with tools to format
media and a utility to check file system integrity.

FlashFX

Introduced in 1995, FlashFX is a flash media manager which allows

applications to access flash memory as if it were a hard drive,[17] abstracting
the complexity of flash media.[22][23] FlashFX operates either NAND or NOR
flash and supports numerous flash devices.[24][25] It can be used with any file
system.

Versions:

FlashFX Pro: Supports around 200 flash chip part numbers and flash arrays
up to 2 GB.[26] Has pre-ported versions for Windows CE, VxWorks, Nucleus
PLUS, and ThreadX.[27] FlashFX Pro is available for Windows Mobile (FlashFX
Tera is not).[26]

FlashFX Tera: Supports around 300 flash chip part numbers and flash arrays
up to 2 TB. Has pre-ported versions for Linux, Windows CE, and VxWorks.[28]
FlashFX Tera supports MLC NAND flash,[29] while FlashFX Pro does not;
another improvement is Tera's error correction, which is more robust than
Pro's.[26]

Products using FlashFX include Arcom's PC/104 computer,[30] Curtis-Wright's

Continuum Software Architecture,[31] Teltronic's HTT-500 handset,[32] and
MCSI's PROMDISK disk emulator.[33]

XCFiles

XCFiles, released in June 2010, is an exFAT-compatible file system aimed at

consumer devices.[34] It allows embedded systems to support SDXC, the SD
Card Association standard for extended capacity storage cards.[34] Marketed
as "independent of the target platform",[35] XCFiles is intended to be portable
to any 32-bit platform which meets certain requirements (such as supporting
semaphores and unsigned 64-bit integers).[36]

XCFiles is marketed in Japan as 'exFiles' by A.I. Corporation; it was released

there in April 2009.[37]

ROM-DOS

ROM-DOS

Developer Datalight

OS family DOS

Source model Closed-source

Initial release 1989

Marketing target Embedded systems

Available in English

Platforms x86

License Proprietary

Official website www.datalight.com/products/rom-dos/

ROM-DOS (sometimes called Datalight DOS[38]) was introduced in 1989 as an

MS-DOS compatible operating system designed for embedded systems.[39] It
includes backward compatibility build options allowing compatibility with
specific versions of MS-DOS (e.g., DOS 5.01). ROM-DOS 7.1 added support for
FAT32 and long file names. ROM-DOS includes a compact TCP/IP stack;[40]
and SOCKETS, a network socket API and connectivity package, is available as
an optional add-on for ROM-DOS.[40][41] The SDK comes with Borland C/C++
and Turbo Assembler.[42]

System requirements:[43][44]

Intel 80186 or compatible

10 KB of RAM

54–72 KB of ROM or disk space (depending on version)

Some devices which use or used ROM-DOS are the Canon PowerShot
Pro70,[38] Advantech's ADAM-4500,[45] the Percon Falcon 325,[46] several early
PDAs (Tandy Zoomer, IBM Simon, HP OmniGo 100/120, Nokia
9000/9000i/9110/9110i), Casio Algebra FX series graphing calculators,
MCSI's PROMDISK,[33] and Arcom's PC/104 computer.[30] Intel's Advanced
RAID Configuration Utility (ARCU) is based on ROM-DOS,[47] and, as of 2004,
all Intel server board System Resource CDs included ROM-DOS.[48] Symbol's
FMT 3000 came with a copy of ROM-DOS.[49]

Commands

The following list of commands is supported by ROM-DOS.[50]

ATTRIB DUMP MKDIR RSZ

BACKUP ECHO MODE SERLINK

BREAK EMM386 MORE SERSERV

CALL ERASE MOVE SET

CD EXE2BIN MSCDEX SHARE

CHDIR EXIT NED SHIFT

CHKDSK FDISK PATH SMARTDRV

CHOICE FIND PAUSE SORT

CLS FOR POWER SUBST

COMM FORMAT PRINT SYS

COMMAND GOTO PROMPT TIME

COPY HELP PROTO TRANSFER

CTTY IF RD TREE

DATE KEYB REM TRUENAME

DEL LABEL REMDISK TYPE

DELTREE LFNFOR REMQUIT UMBLINK

DIR LOADHIGH REMSERV VER

DISK2IMG MD REN VERIFY

DISKCOMP MEM RESTORE VOL

DISKCOPY MINICMD.COM RMDIR XCOPY

References

1. Datalight Company Profile . LinkedIn.

2. Private Company Information: Datalight, Inc. BusinessWeek.

3. Ganssle, Jack (13 July 2015). "An Interview with Datalight" . embedded.com.
Retrieved 2015-08-06.

4. "Ensuring that devices don't lose data ." Tricia Duryee. The Seattle Times; July
16, 2007.

5. "Leadership Team ." Datalight. Retrieved 2010-08-23.

6. Eckel, Bruce. Using C++, Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1989, p. 34.

7. PC Magazine, Volume 7, Issues 18–19 , p. 38.

8. Walter Bright home page . Retrieved 2010-08-04.

9. "History of PC based C-compilers ." Bob Stout. 1998.

10. Walter Bright interview . Bitwise Magazine; May 2006.

11. "Desktop DOS goes undercover to run embedded systems ." David Shear.
EDN; August 4, 1994.

12. Norm Dresner (2005-09-30). "Re: 80186 free C compiler" .

Newsgroup: comp.arch.embedded . Retrieved 2010-07-19.

13. United States Patent 5860082: "Method and apparatus for allocating storage
in a flash memory ."

14. United States Patent 6260156: "Method and system for managing bad areas
in flash memory ."

15. United States Patent 7284101: "Reliable file system and method of providing
the same ."

16. United States Patent 8572036: "Method and Apparatus for Fault-tolerant
Memory Management ."

17. Miller, Drew. Black Hat Physical Device Security: Exploiting Hardware and
Software, p. 49 . Syngress, 2004. ISBN 978-1-932266-81-8.

18. Reliance Datasheet , p. 1.

19. "Reliance ." Datalight. Retrieved 2010-08-13.

20. Reliance Developer's Guide, ch. 1.

21. Reliance Nitro Developer's Guide, "Introduction".

22. "Optimizing Resident Flash Arrays in Windows CE Devices ." Dennis Edwards
and Keith Garvin. Dr. Dobb's Journal; November 01, 2001.

23. "The Rise to Dominance of NAND Flash ." Bill Graham. Wind River; November
24, 2009.

24. "Thanks For The Memory ." William Wong. Electronic Design; May 21, 2009.

25. ""Linux gains high-performance flash filesystem" .." Eric Brown.

LinuxDevices.com; January 29, 2008.

26. "Flash Memory Drivers ." Datalight. Retrieved 2010-08-13.

27. FlashFX Pro 3.0 Datasheet , p. 1.

28. FlashFx Tera Datasheet Archived 2013-01-21 at Archive.today, p. 1.

29. ""Windows CE gets enhanced flash support" . Archived from the original on
2011-07-16.." Jonathan Angel. WindowsForDevices.com; April 15, 2010.

30. "PC/104 computer survives harsh environments ." Warren Webb. EDN;
February 3, 2000.

31. "Curtiss-Wright Chooses Datalight's FlashFX Pro Flash Media Manager for
Continuum Software Architecture Offering ." Curtis-Wright. August 3, 2006.

32. "Customer Story: Teltronic Archived 2011-06-13 at the Wayback Machine."

ENEA. 2007.

33. PROMDISK . MCSI.

34. XCFiles Datasheet , p. 1.

35. XCFiles FAQ Archived 2012-07-30 at Archive.today, p. 2.

36. exFiles User's Manual (v. 1.04), pp. 67, 72.

37. "exFAT ファイルシステムの海外向け販売を開始 ". A.I. Corporation; July 6,

2010. (Google translation .)

38. "Datalight DOS Selected for Canon's New Line of Digital Still Cameras ."
Business Wire; February 23, 1999.

39. ROM-DOS Datasheet , p. 1.

40. Jones, M. Tim. TCP/IP Application Layer Protocols for Embedded Systems,
Appendix C: TCP/IP Protocol Stacks . Charles River Media, 2002. ISBN 1-
58450-247-9.

41. Datalight SOCKETS . Retrieved 2010-07-19.

42. ROM-DOS Datasheet , p. 2.

43. ROM-DOS Product Manual, p. 6.

44. ROM DOS 6.22 . EMAC, Inc. 2010. The vendor's system requirements are
somewhat higher: 18KB of RAM and 124K of space.

45. ADAM-4500 - PC-based Communication Controller . Advantech.

46. "Data Collection RF Scanners ." Data ID Online.

47. Intel Server RAID Controller U3-1L Low Profile (SRCU31L): Technical Product
Specification , p. 12.

48. "INSTALL.TXT for System Update Package (SUP) Archived 2011-07-13 at

the Wayback Machine." May 19, 2004.

49. FMT 3000 Software Manual Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine,
p. 41.

50. "Datalight ROM-DOS User's Guide" (PDF). www.datalight.com.

External links

Official website