Re: [tlug] dual boot iPAQ

[Jim Tittsler <jwt-tlug@example.com>]

On Sun, Sep 15, 2002 at 10:00:44PM +0900, Ulrich Plate wrote:
> Coming to think of it, if you use a CF card to boot and everything,
> isn't that a) terribly slow, b) draining your battery like there's no
> tomorrow, and c) dramatically reducing the life span of that card?

I did not notice any difference in speed or battery life.
The system still runs in the iPAQ's ramdisk, just as it does
when running from the system flash RAM.

I suppose the extra writes involved do shorten the life of the
card (compared to jffs2's more sparing erase strategy on an
MTD), but is it something you are going to notice?  The CF will
spread the wear, and you wouldn't be doing that much more
writing to "system" files on CF... I already keep most of my
data files on CF regardless of where the system is... and that
is where the bulk of the day-to-day writes happen.

> Yesterday's meeting was much fun, thanks for the opportunity. Leaving
> the stage of a techie gathering to a marketing fluffy like myself must
> have felt bizarre for some people... :-)

I'm glad both you and Mauro were able to spread some enthusiasm
for Linux on pocket-sized devices.

> Familiar
> http://familiar.handhelds.org
> The mother of all iPaq Linuces. For the initial installation I suggest
> you grab your iPaq's PCMCIA sleeve and a WiFi card and go to the Linux
> Cafe for a nice Latte and an hour or two of very straightforward
> installation via the wireless LAN.

It is also worth mentioning that the 0.6 Familiar pre-releases
simplify a couple of the tasks that Mauro mentioned.  You can
now pick an initial root system image that contains just the
bare essentials (like the 0.5.3 release Mauro described), or
ones with either Opie <http://opie.handhelds.org/> or GPE
<http://gpe.handhelds.org/> already installed.  This gets you
going from nothing to a "usable" system much faster.  The 0.6
release also makes better use of the USB hot-plug system to
automate bringing up and tearing down the USB networking
interface.


-- 
Jim Tittsler                                         GPG: 0x01159DB6
Kanto Computer Calendar  http://www.OnJapan.net/calendar/