Old 02-14-2005, 08:10 PM   #1
Coocha
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Default Embedded Jesusonic (Software Question)

OK, here's the deal: I'm thinking about testing Jesusonic under Debian on a Mini-ITX machine, using an embedded CompactFlash drive. Now before someone mentions that this might be better answered in the Hardware discussion thread, keep in mind that CompactFlash has poor write speed, and rewriting too often increases flash card mortality.

I've read about and used the JFFS2 file system on flash devices before, and it's supposed to help ameliorate the drive mortality issue, but it occurred to me that depending on how the Jesusonic software is programmed (and how it buffers loops) it might all be for naught. Would a decent amount of RAM ensure that it runs with minimal writes to a Flash card, or is that not how the program is coded?

I'm interested in a low-noise solution for running Jesusonic on a rackmounted machine, so an embedded solution would be ideal to avoid the heat issues associated with hard drives.
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Old 02-15-2005, 03:53 PM   #2
Justin
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coocha
OK, here's the deal: I'm thinking about testing Jesusonic under Debian on a Mini-ITX machine, using an embedded CompactFlash drive. Now before someone mentions that this might be better answered in the Hardware discussion thread, keep in mind that CompactFlash has poor write speed, and rewriting too often increases flash card mortality.

I've read about and used the JFFS2 file system on flash devices before, and it's supposed to help ameliorate the drive mortality issue, but it occurred to me that depending on how the Jesusonic software is programmed (and how it buffers loops) it might all be for naught. Would a decent amount of RAM ensure that it runs with minimal writes to a Flash card, or is that not how the program is coded?

I'm interested in a low-noise solution for running Jesusonic on a rackmounted machine, so an embedded solution would be ideal to avoid the heat issues associated with hard drives.
Jesusonic only writes when you save a preset or effect, so you should be fine. I personally use ext2 for the readonly boot partition, and fat32 for the effect/preset writeable partition. Flash memory has gotten pretty good though, anyway, i.e. upwards of 100,000 writes, which should be fine for many years to come.

Other things that may be obvious but should be said anyway are:
+ have lots of ram
+ do not have a swap partition if running from swap
+ if you have 256mb ram, use -maxmem 200 (or something) on the command line, to reserve memory for non-jesusonic use (i.e. for the system cache etc).
+ finally, you may want to look into spending the extra money and getting a Pentium-M mini-itx board. They have them with small fans that make very little noise, and it will have quite a bit of extra processing power. I haven't tried the newer 1ghz epia boards that have full speed FPUs, but those might be better as well.

-Justin
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