Running Pdaxii13 Completely Off Sd (no Nand) In Akita

[ToneBlind]

I think the title says it all. I just got my SL-C1000 a few days ago from eBay, and I'm right now running the stock Sharp Rom. I inquired in the Sharp Rom area of the forum, and Capn Fish mentioned that he believes pdaXii13 can run fully off a SD card, without ever writting to NAND once everything is setup.

I quickly ran through Meanie's documents (thanks, Meanie!), and it seems that the way you install to Akita is first doing a base install to NAND, and then copying a hdd image to a prepartitioned SD card.

My questions are: Once this is done, do all write operations get confined to SD? And also, Meanie mentions that this procedure (the hdd image copied to the SD card in Akita) is somewhat experimental. Is it still experimental? Experimental can be a scary word.

Finally, if any of you guys has pdaXii13 working with this setup (writes only to SD, NAND read-only at most), how is the performance? There is something about this setup that is very appealing to me, since the price of SD cards right now is very low, and I'd rather wear a replaceable part than the built-in NAND.

Thanks in advance!

[Capn_Fish]

I know quite a few people have been running their C1000s off of SD with this, and I haven't heard of any major issues. I say do a NAND backup and go for it. If you don't like it or hit a roadblock, just restore the NAND image and return to your current state.

For how to do the NAND stuff, see the pinned "Is your Z dead after trying to install pdaXrom?" thread (I think it has directions in it).

[LinuxGadget]

I know quite a few people have been running their C1000s off of SD with this, and I haven't heard of any major issues. I say do a NAND backup and go for it. If you don't like it or hit a roadblock, just restore the NAND image and return to your current state.

For how to do the NAND stuff, see the pinned "Is your Z dead after trying to install pdaXrom?" thread (I think it has directions in it).

100% ACK. pdaxii3 worked like a charm on my C1k! Go for it!

[ToneBlind]

I know quite a few people have been running their C1000s off of SD with this, and I haven't heard of any major issues. I say do a NAND backup and go for it. If you don't like it or hit a roadblock, just restore the NAND image and return to your current state.

For how to do the NAND stuff, see the pinned "Is your Z dead after trying to install pdaXrom?" thread (I think it has directions in it).

Thanks again, Capn. I am definitely going to do a NAND backup and install pdaXii13. Just a couple more questions and I'll be off with it. How come you aren't running this rom? Not fast enough for you?

Edit: Nevermind, I just saw in your signature that you are running pdaXrom.  

[ToneBlind]

100% ACK. pdaxii3 worked like a charm on my C1k! Go for it!

Thanks, I'm getting definitely excited here. As if my SL-C1000 wasn't cool enough already running the stock ROM, I can now run an X11 system that is as stable and more powerful than the Sharp ROM!

I have a couple of questions: Is still the way to go to first do the base install to NAND and then load the full image to SD? I don't know if this has changed and somehow it is possible now to do a full install to SD directly.

And, once with a full install in SD, is the NAND used for anything? Is it written at any moment? Or is the SD used exclusively for write operations?

How about the size of the SD card, what limitations are there? Right now I am using 1Gb with the stock ROM because that's the limit on that ROM.

Thanks!

[Capn_Fish]

I'm running pdaXrom because it's newer than pdaXii13 (newer kernel, more bleeding edge). I've been happy with the stability/functionality, and haven't seen a need to try pdaXii13.

[ToneBlind]

I'm running pdaXrom because it's newer than pdaXii13 (newer kernel, more bleeding edge). I've been happy with the stability/functionality, and haven't seen a need to try pdaXii13.

Gotcha.   What's the performance like in stuff like mplayer, xmms, and feh? I can't do without those in my laptop, and I would really like to be able to use them in my Zaurus too. When you install the rom in your SL-C3100 I understand pdaXii13 runs from the microdrive. Are there writes performed to the NAND in that configuration?

Sorry I keep making all these questions, but I'm really new at this, and although there is documentation out there it is often times a little inaccessible to me at this point in the sense of being able to grok it fully.  

[Capn_Fish]

Performance of those apps in r198 or in pdaXii13? They're good in r198, but MPlayer will likely be a little better in pdaXii13 due to being able to use bvdd (the optimizations in mplayer-bvdd-iwmmxt work for r198 too, hence the difference not being so great). Can't comment on pdaXii13 or music apps, though. My impression from others has been that r198 feels faster due to the faster NAND access.

I think you can make pdaXii13 run totally off of the microdrive (ie, not even have NAND mounted).

HTH

[ToneBlind]

Performance of those apps in r198 or in pdaXii13? They're good in r198, but MPlayer will likely be a little better in pdaXii13 due to being able to use bvdd (the optimizations in mplayer-bvdd-iwmmxt work for r198 too, hence the difference not being so great). Can't comment on pdaXii13 or music apps, though. My impression from others has been that r198 feels faster due to the faster NAND access.

I think you can make pdaXii13 run totally off of the microdrive (ie, not even have NAND mounted).

HTH

Aye aye, Capn!  
It sounds like I'll need to research more to fulfill my dream to have pdaXii13 running on my SLC-1000 without writing to NAND. I think as long as I am willing to run from (but not write stuff to) NAND it should be fairly easy just by symlinking the home directory to SD. It just would be so much cooler to be able to run everything from SD... Even more so, have different SDs with different ROMs on them.