The Quick Questions Thread

[moz]

I thought this may be a good idea.


RULES:

1. no question, no answer, no post
   
2. that will be all
   
3. rules are meant to be broken (just not too much)
   

these rules may or may not be plagiarized from another forum


I'll get this started,


what is the resolution for n64 emulation? I've seen both 320x240 and 640x480, which is correct?

 

[Gerix]

I hate asking questions on this forum, because I always seem to get rude answers, but I'll give it a shot: Can the OS be set up so that all (or at least most) partitions lying on the NAND are mounted read-only?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

You can't mount a whole Linux OS read-only. But, putting some stuff in ram, and maybe partitioning (remember the NAND is small) will do the trick.


What do you want to do ?

 

[Prometheus]

what is the resolution for n64 emulation? I've seen both 320x240 and 640x480, which is correct?

My understanding is that technically, both are correct.


Furthermore, a quick glance at Wikipedia (so take it with a bucket of salt ) suggests that the resolutions the N64 could output are 256x224, 320x240, and 640x480.

 

[Gerix]

You can't mount a whole Linux OS read-only. But, putting some stuff in ram, and maybe partitioning (remember the NAND is small) will do the trick.


What do you want to do ?

Hmm, I guess I don't know. The first objective is preserving the NAND. I've heard it can only take so many erases before it goes bad. I guess that number is pretty big, but it would be nice if I didn't have to worry about it at all, especially since the NAND cannot be swapped out. Also, I'm thinking if I don't have an SD-card inserted, I'd like the system to be stateless. I was reading some of the ancillary documentation on gentoo.org and maybe I got a little excited. Anyway, maybe having the OS on an SD card would work better. I see myself doing that with Neuvoo, at least. It would be a lot easier to form an idea of what I wanted if I had my Pandora in front of me. It wasn't that long ago that I thought I would surely receive it before the end of tax season.


A little off-topic. I was playing Master of Darkness on my game gear last weekend. It was pretty fun, but I'm afraid the screen wasn't working very well. It would be cool if someday, waaay down the road, I rediscovered my Pandora and had an amazing weekend. That's assuming I ever put it to storage. The PC elements make it seem like I would use it until it wore out.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

From what i read here and there, you don't have to worry about NAND read/write cycles. Should be waaaaaay sufficient for the lifetime of the OP.


What do you mean by stateless ?


OS on SD is a good idea. And as SD cards will be faster and faster, it will soon overspeed the NAND.


On my side, i will try RAID on NAND as soon as i'll masterize OP kernel compile. 2X speed will rock.


It is highly possible to boot on USB too. With this kind of device, it will be neat :


http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11546

 

[Gerix]

Oh, ok. I've been reading stuff about the NAND getting worn out prematurely if things aren't configured correctly. And by stateless, I mean nothing would change between logins if there aren't any SD cards inserted.


That MosKeyTo looks pretty neat. But all the pictures seem to show it with the keyring and cap connected. Would it be possible to remove those (without cutting the string) to just leave it in there?

 

[Alec]

You can't mount a whole Linux OS read-only. But, putting some stuff in ram, and maybe partitioning (remember the NAND is small) will do the trick.


What do you want to do ?

Well, technically you can, but a lot of things will be failing because they can't write. I've done it a couple of times - once to upgrade the filesystem to ext4 (to avoid burning a livecd), and a few times to make a full-disk backup.


As to Gerix's question, you can put most of the system on a read-only partition, with the exception of the directories /var, /tmp and /home that should be on a writable partition. In fact, there have been talks of doing just that in the upcoming Fedora 16 using btrfs's volume management features.


In fact, I think it should be possible to create a read-only btrfs volume on NAND, and then have any changes made to it be transparently written on an SDcard (btrfs is copy-on-write) - so any parts of files that are unchanged are read from NAND, and the newer parts from the card.

 

[Viking]

Will I see Spotify on the pandora anytime soon?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Oh, ok. I've been reading stuff about the NAND getting worn out prematurely if things aren't configured correctly. And by stateless, I mean nothing would change between logins if there aren't any SD cards inserted.


That MosKeyTo looks pretty neat. But all the pictures seem to show it with the keyring and cap connected. Would it be possible to remove those (without cutting the string) to just leave it in there?

Some kind of untouchable NAND. Well, if it's for security reason, you better boot safe OS on SD, and dirty OS on NAND.


There's other USB drives which have a little size.


I think the cap is soldered (so it's removable, you may have repair the plastic after opening), but i may be wrong.

 

[Austin25]

What do you want to do ?

I want to make a post. :lol:


Would it be difficult to make our own TV cables?

 

[MarioPandio]

Sourcing the tv connectors is the hard part, as OPT have tons but are reluctant to sell the spares in case it hits the number of orders for them and the various companies offering them have high lead times and large minimum order limits or business restrictions. Wizardstan may take the plunge on those though.

 

[Gerix]

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the discussion.

 

[XxionxX]

Where has the F13 key on my keyboard gone?

 

[WizardStan]

Probably the same place that the paragraph key went.


Oh wait, there it is.

 

[hideki]

Hi


Just got my Pandora a couple of days ago...


How can I control which partitions are automounted from the SD cards? I have an ext3 partition on there which I'd rather didn't appear on the desktop.


Which brings me to, how can I setup an aufs /usr (read from nand, write to aforementioned SD partition)?


I did it the way I thought I should do it but it failed to mount on the reboot (although a test mount elsewhere in /etc/fstab with a mount -a before reboot seemed to work)


I intend to move /home to /usr/home and add the required symlink so the NAND will be written to as little as possible, already have the compilers etc. installed to NAND so will have quick access to any needed tools and the main libraries


Also, is there any way to backup the NAND to SD and restore it later, I don't see the NAND in /proc/partitions so I'm not exactly sure what's going on there...


Thanks


--


Hideki