Cramfs

[fomit]

I have seen the success stories and am thinking of testing this out. I just had a few questions.

Is this going to be updated everytime there is a new firmware from GPH?

Is this something that could be added into the firmware by GPH?

Is approximately 14 seconds the quickest the boot times will get?

What apps will not work with a read-only NAND? Does it affect only the GPH apps or will it affect something like DrMDX?

 

[sam fisher]

Well to use this as its read only GPH would be shooting themself in the foot by stopping a lot of apps from working.

 

[subin]

Well to use this as its read only GPH would be shooting themself in the foot by stopping a lot of apps from working.

​

actually, craigix is trying to convince them to work it into the next firmware somehow. it makes sense though, because by writing to the NAND every boot its limited lifetime is shortened more and more. it's mainly a matter of making folders within the cramfs tree that can be written to, which i think theoddbot has already done for applications like ebook reader and mplayer, but im not sure.

 

[FluffyPanda]

Well to use this as its read only GPH would be shooting themself in the foot by stopping a lot of apps from working.

​

Those apps should never have been writing to the nand anyway.

The only thing you need to do is have a small, writable partition for settings files, bookmarks and the like. The firmware itself really should be read only.

 

[fomit]

One more quick question concerning CRAMFS:

Has anyone succesfully installed this using batteries? I've read one horror story so far. Would it be best for me to order an adaptor and do it that way? Are fully charged batteries enough or will that guaranteee a brick? Why/how is flashing the bootloader different from flashing the kernel? Does it require more power somehow?

I just looked at Firmware 1.0.1 and it had a *boot.img file. Does this mean that it flashed the bootloader? I always make sure that I have full batteries when I flash. If I flash with cramfs, will I brick my unit?

 

[FFNoir]

You can use batteries, just make sure they are fully charged... Honestly flashing the firmware should take maybe a minute... whereas fully charged 2500 mAh batteries can last 6 hours...

 

[rokdcasbah]

You can use batteries, just make sure they are fully charged... Honestly flashing the firmware should take maybe a minute... whereas fully charged 2500 mAh batteries can last 6 hours...

​

it makes no sense to talk about battery life in that way as flashing the nand is a power hungry thing. it definitely will drain your batteries.

however, that said, if you have decent batteries there should be enough to flash theoddbot's firmware. i have 4 energizer 2200s. i used 2 to do the cramfs switch, and i used a fresh pair to flash the kernel img (just to be safe). but be aware that it's a risky thing to do.

 

[fomit]

Well, I did the cramfs flash on medium batteries. Everything worked well. Then I did the kernel.img with a fully charged set just to make sure. I probably could have done everything on the medium batteries. Better safe than sorry I guess.

So. Does anyone have any reports on apps that won't work? I can't seem to save in Zelda DX in the new (0.6b) GNUBoy but I'm not sure if that's a CRAMFS problem or a GNUBoy problem.

What is really nice is the 13-14 second boot times. Very sweet. Thanks theoddbot!

 

[rokdcasbah]

i was using the new gnuboy with the oddbot's firmware and i was able to save states with super mario land.

 

[fomit]

i was using the new gnuboy with the oddbot's firmware and i was able to save states with super mario land.

​

I'm talking an actual save, not just a save state.

 

[rokdcasbah]

ah. sorry for the confusion. maybe it hasn't been implemented yet.

 

[barnesy]

Yeah, save states seem fine in the new gnuboy, but even the name entry in Tetris DX doesn't seem to save automatically for me, so I'm guessing SRAM saves are either broken, not in there, or aren't obvious.