Speed issue and CF Sandisk Card

Ragpot · 07-22-03, 04:19 PM

I've posted earlier about the ongoing speed debate - thanks to everone who replied by the way.

One thing I have notices is there is a definate connection between the speed on the Axim and pulling information from Compact Flash.

I have a 256 Sandisk CF, with a couple of games loaded such as Pacman (very simple program wise) but when I open the games folder, it can take up to 10 seconds to read the files and thus display the icons.

This has the effect of grinding the whole system to a standstill, even exiting the program.

Ive also noticed that even with just one other program then pacman really slows down when playing and gitters every couple of seconds or so.

I coppied across a small movie clip to the Axim interal memory and run - All seemed OK, but when I put the same clip on the CF card it jittered during playback. - the clip was optimised using MS Movie maker 2 for Pocket PC........

Looks to me like theres a comms issue too between peripherals such as CF.

just IMHO though.

Anyone agree then feel free to comment :D

Magadin · 07-22-03, 04:22 PM

The more games that are installed on either card increase the time it takes for the games folder to open on my machine. I would assume it has something to do with the OS looking at all the shortcuts and the speed of the card. I am hoping after the upgrade (fixed) to WM2003 this would improve...

zukakog · 07-23-03, 02:12 PM

I have a 1GB CF card and experience that problem all of the time. If I set an app to look only in one folder for files it works fine, but if I have it set to search my whole system (including the CF card) it takes like three minutes! There are a few programs like Excel that always search the CF card. It's really annoying. Is this a problem on all devices or just the Axim? I think it has to do with the CF card slot on the Axim. I have a card reader and it takes me about 15 minuits to copy a whole gig with it! The card reader is just like another drive for my pc. It's super fast.

Magadin · 07-23-03, 03:09 PM

It's not just the CF card, it's the SD card as well, that's where I install everything.

I think that PPC does the same thing windows does, when you open up a menu and it has shortcut's, it tries to resolve the shortcuts. Did you ever notice in Win2K if you have a network drive that no longer exists it dramatically increases the time it takes to open the explore window?

I think the device has to resove all the shortcuts in the games menu and this takes access time for either card. May be something related to what is happening for WM2003 with the Axim's. I'm hoping when they have a firmware fix it is available for 2002 and 2003 (although, once I get my upgrade it will be used).

o9guy · 07-24-03, 02:54 PM

I dunno. I have been noticing a lot of similarities with the way a full blown Windows installation and how PPC act. To be specific, Windows always seems to want to cache the icons for files. If you have a directory full of very large windows files, it takes longer and longer to see the folder's contents and the folder size grow. Also, this activity is mimicked when connecting a PPC to a network share in windows. In addition to that, the bandwidth pipeline for the CF card and the SD card seem to be far less than optimized. I have read from my 256MB sandisk and my 256MB CF card from USB readers for Windows with FAR more speed than from my Axim. Even so, there are two points to consider. One, there aren't many handhelds that are so much better in the SD / CF throughput. Second, no matter how you look at it, it's still impressive as can be that they were able to add all of the functionality to something no bigger than a deck of cards.