External Ram?

[DrLGR]

I was wondering if SDIO cards could be used to give the Pandora extra RAM? I heard a while ago about flash drives that could be used to temperarily boost system RAM, and was wondering if SDIO cards could do the same thing. If this is possible it would allow users to run apps that would normally need more RAM than the Pandora has.

 

[Squidge]

If you wanted more ram, you could just tell linux to mount a swap file on your sd card

Would be very slow, but it would work.

 

[Holokauston]

SD cards isn't really happy with lots of reading/writing on them, would lower their lifetime a lot

 

[sindbad]

SD cards isn't really happy with lots of reading/writing on them, would lower their lifetime a lot

Not so much lately. They're quite cheap anyway.

 

[javaJake]

How about a USB drive? Would that work?

 

[anexanhume]

Those options would work, but they completely defeat the purpose. They would slow your system down. Besides, what one application would you run that requires more than 128mb of ram?

 

[icurafu]

Ha, and you will never need more than 640KB of RAM.

 

[javaJake]

Those options would work, but they completely defeat the purpose. They would slow your system down. Besides, what one application would you run that requires more than 128mb of ram?

Oh, you know, the usual IM, Firefox, and media player.

It's not that I need it, it's that I might want it in the event I decide to do something... RAM-intensive.

 

[goobers]

I want it to make ridiculous LUTs for everything

 

[Svartalf]

SD cards isn't really happy with lots of reading/writing on them, would lower their lifetime a lot

Actually...heh...they've got a bigger lifetime than one would think as long as you're not using the cheapass ones.

~2 million write cycles per cell is the average life expectancy nowadays on much of the flash cards these days. With the built-in wear levelling on the things you could be bashing crap continuously to the flash, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over four years before you start to "wear it out". This is WHY they're selling Solid State Disks on some laptop models these days.

I checked into this and it's why the Nokia 770/800/810 series devices offer a 128Mb swap file option on their units. We could do the same thing- as long as you're using 'Ultra-SD' (133x or faster) or class 4 or better SDHC cards you won't have it be too slow and it won't wear it out realistically throughout the normal life expectancy of the Pandora.

 

[quartercast]

Too bad the Pando doesn't have a phat, super-fast expansion slot like NDS/GBA. That could be used for all sorts of things

 

[Exophase]

Too bad the Pando doesn't have a phat, super-fast expansion slot like NDS/GBA. That could be used for all sorts of things

Super-fast is quite an exaggeration in this case. Maybe relatively so, since the rest of the platform isn't that fast. Having all those pins helps though.

 

[Svartalf]

Too bad the Pando doesn't have a phat, super-fast expansion slot like NDS/GBA. That could be used for all sorts of things

'Phat' it is. Super fast, it's not. The extra connections in the GBA cart connector make interfacing goofball hardware to the GBA simpler to accomplish, but the SD slot can provide a pathway to many upgrades and the ones that aren't there can mostly be done via USB 2.0 jiggery-pokery.

The reason I indicate this is that while the GBA's data access is parallel, the GBA itself isn't all that fast. It's clock speed is about 16.7 MHz. This means, that without doing anything but pushing or pulling from the cartridge bus, the GBA is capable of no more than 16.7 MB/sec off of that bus. Hey...that's the same data rate as some of the better SD cards out there and under the peak for SDIO. Moreover, you have controllers handling the I/O accesses on the machine side- which means that your 600MHz of CPU is able to do other things while you're pushing data or control accesses once you issue the request to the device. In the case of the GBA, you're having it do nothing but the accesses when you're driving peak speed- so if you're making it do other work, you're not going to see the 16.7MB/sec speed there. With the SD stuff, you will. And, this doesn't even get into USB based stuff.

 

[quartercast]

'Phat' it is. Super fast, it's not. The extra connections in the GBA cart connector make interfacing goofball hardware to the GBA simpler to accomplish, but the SD slot can provide a pathway to many upgrades and the ones that aren't there can mostly be done via USB 2.0 jiggery-pokery.

The reason I indicate this is that while the GBA's data access is parallel, the GBA itself isn't all that fast. It's clock speed is about 16.7 MHz. This means, that without doing anything but pushing or pulling from the cartridge bus, the GBA is capable of no more than 16.7 MB/sec off of that bus. Hey...that's the same data rate as some of the better SD cards out there and under the peak for SDIO. Moreover, you have controllers handling the I/O accesses on the machine side- which means that your 600MHz of CPU is able to do other things while you're pushing data or control accesses once you issue the request to the device. In the case of the GBA, you're having it do nothing but the accesses when you're driving peak speed- so if you're making it do other work, you're not going to see the 16.7MB/sec speed there. With the SD stuff, you will. And, this doesn't even get into USB based stuff.

Well this port is fast enough to be used as a RAM expansion pack for the DS Lite. I'm not quite sure what you mean - the Pando doesn't run at 16.7 MHz, is that point relevant at all? And doesn't the memory pack come with its own controller? Again, I have no idea about the specs of these things.. I tried looking them up but to no avail

 

[javaJake]

So, the answer then is, you can use an SD card as long as you get a good one.

Now the question is... which SD cards are good? To be continued...

 

[Squidge]

So, the answer then is, you can use an SD card as long as you get a good one.

Now the question is... which SD cards are good? To be continued...

What would be better is a usb harddrive

 

[icurafu]

Would a USB key be better? I imagine you can get faster speeds that way.

 

[quartercast]

can you get USB keys which only jut out a little bit? I'd rather not walk around with a big appendage sticking out from my pando.

 

[icurafu]

can you get USB keys which only jut out a little bit? I'd rather not walk around with a big appendage sticking out from my pando.

I have a USB Key that is the size of a sim card. (1GB capacity) I'm not sure of the speed, but it seem to be up to typical.

I'd buy a 1GB fast usb key if it was only for the occasional application or game, even if it sticks out and looks ugly.

 

[Chip]

Even the fastest USB flash drives top out around 20MB/sec read, and a bit less for write. It's about the same for a fast SDHC card. You wouldn't gain anything by using a USB stick over a SD card.