A Thought Concerning Linux..

[Cahaz]

So,

Linux is already on the machine. We all know how linux works (well, ..) if we're able to play with it a little, or to change/tweak it a bit, we could maybe (and i said: Maybe) create swap partitions

. for those who never touched linux, Linux is working with multiple partitions, some are Necessary for the System, others are Optionnals. In those optionnal Partitions, There's the Swap partitition. The Swap partition is a ' virtual memory' partition. It's no 'temp' Folder, or anything.

The Gp2x Have 64mb of memory, A SD card Port, And 64mb Of Nand memory. This 'Nand' memory can be used for anything. Some unziped Neo Geo roms take More than 64mb of space. This is where the swap could come in handy.

If the Nand memory is fast enough, we could probably (and this is only in theory, with the little info we have so far) Separate it a bit to create a Swap, And play Kof 98 and higher, Mark of The wolves and Every Metal Slugs. B)

This is just an idea like that, i don't knoiw if it would be possible from the hardware point of view, or if they moddified the kernel too much to make this possible...

What do you think?

 

[Vimacs]

I dont think gp2x linux will need a swap file, but some applications MAY profit from it.
The problem is that nand memory can only take a limited number of write cycles, swap likely would wear it out pretty fast.

 

[Cahaz]

Really? that really sucks. Not only for the swap. Do you know what's the number of time you can write on it?

but some applications MAY profit from it.

this is the reason why swap could be cool.

Anyway, there's still another place to make a Swap Partition, The SD card, but i doubt it could be doable. I wonder if you can format a SDcard,. I'm no mem Card expert, and didn't used one yet. There's also the Speed and Buffer problem though. I wonder what is the maximum speed the gp2x can read to...

 

[bhxob]

Typically for swap partitions to be effective you need more swap space than you have ram. For instance, my first computer running linux was a pentium 133Mhz with 64M ram and used a 128M swap partition. Without preformatting each of your SD cards with a swap partition of reasonable size (swap can sometimes be autodetected, but this is system dependent) or adding other internal storage, this does not seem likely.

It would be interesting to have an SD card for things like MAME, where your MAME SD card had a swap partition on it, ready for use. (say a 1G card with a 256M swap partition and the rest being a normal... vfat/ext2/other... filesystem holding normal data.)

As with most of what I have to say, alot of assumptions here. Swap would either have to be on a set partitoin number or would have to be auto detected for that setup to work.

There is also the possibility that the swap segment of your SD card would die more quickly than the rest of it (though most providers offer 5year or even lifetime warranties on their SD cards.)

 

[Vimacs]

Anyway, there's still another place to make a Swap Partition, The SD card,

Sd is also nand :-/

but i doubt it could be doable.

Should be very doable as its just a mounted storage.

I wonder if you can format a SDcard,

Yes you can format them.

I wonder what is the maximum speed the gp2x can read to...

MMSP2 can read sd cards with 25mhz (100mbit), thats maximum speed.
BUT gp2x linux may only be able to acces it in spi mode wich would mean 25mbit max.

Would be nice when squidge or someone could say something about that.

 

[DaveC]

Really? that really sucks. Not only for the swap. Do you know what's the number of time you can write on it?

​

It is can be written to hundreds of thousands on times before cells start going out. That is like forever for normal use (installing apps etc.). A swapfile type arrangement would wear it out relatively quick though.

 

[Squidge]

I can't really comment until I've seen a retail unit, as the dev boards have too many unfinished or unimplemented stuff on them.

 

[reallynotnick]

Really? that really sucks. Not only for the swap. Do you know what's the number of time you can write on it?

​

It is can be written to hundreds of thousands on times before cells start going out. That is like forever for normal use (installing apps etc.). A swapfile type arrangement would wear it out relatively quick though.

​

*plays metal slug 3 for 100,000th time* Crap it stoped working.

I think we would have a hard time wearing it out, I would be more worried about fragging up the whole nand flash. Don't want to do that because the whole system is stored on that.

I think we should just stay away altogether from the nand flash, expect for OS updates and maybe a few system hacks. You have an SD card for everything else, who needs the 30mb (or so) that the nand flash has free.

 

[lucoxade]

A swap partition is only realy useful in true multitasking enviroment, it is used to place inactive tasks into a kinda sleep mode, it would slow down normal operation if you wanted to play big games/apps without a dedicated MMU in the CPU. Having DMA to to any storage NAND would be more useful than having swap for big roms IMHO.

OOh all these acronyms make me feel like I know what i'm talking about B)

PS. Hello all this is my first post here!