2GB Ram - How?
 

Hello,

I have just ordered my first Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and was wondering what I need to do to get the 2gb memory I ordered for it to work. I heard it only works with 1GB.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

ColdSun

the latest firmware image supports 2GB.

make sure you don't format the card using FAT. Too much wasted space with FAT. I formatted mine using FAT32 while connected to WinXP.

Thank you that will make things a lot easier. I can't wait to get the thing now. :)

2G for dummies
 

Consider me a 770 dummy. Should I have any reservations about ordering the first and cheapest 2g rs-mmc card I see on the net (or the mmc mobile that says it is a replacement)?
Will I be able to just pop it in and put more and longer video programs?
I know nothing about formatting or partitioning (but I am a fast and willing learner).
I am a new 770 owner who has only had use of the 770 for a few weeks before sending it in for a minor repair of the earphone jack input. While waiting anxiously for it's return I am thinking about getting the memory but don't want to waste money.

:confused:
Dan Hausle

Hi!

Another dummy.....
Does the rs-mmc card increase RAM? My belief was that RAM was not upgradable....?

Magnus

Yup, MMC card adds storage for mp3, books and video.
But you can make a big swap on it, like 128Mb, and have more virtual memory. Physical RAM is 64Mb, and there is no way to upgrade it, but swap does it's job perfectly, I just forget about memory limits.

OK, that's interesting. So how do I make a swap file on it? I guess it takes more than formatting the device. Are we talking about creating a swap partition (regular linux swap) or a swapfile on the existing filesystem?

Magnus

You can do this through the 770's control panel quite easily, actually --- look under Memory, IIRC.

128 MB swap? Really?

It would be nice. Since I activated the swap on NokiLLO (64 MB is all I got), I have discovered that I've become less judicious in shutting down apps I'm not using just now. The result is that I once more, on occasion, end up with a less stable NokiLLO.

Still, I figure 128 MB swap would only temporarily alleviate my problem...

I use a 128MB swap partition. It's not as easy as the swapfile but it's doable.
You need to edit /etc/fstab and also a few init files to do the swapon at boot and swapoff at shutdown and reboot.
I've posted about it here before.

Swap partitions I do not want.

Unless there's a way to make it automagically umount itself upon opening the memory card slot, that is. I swap cards way too often to even want to consider having to reboot everytime (it still happens on a blue monday with the Nokia swapfile; probably because I janked the card out too quickly).

I've never hot-swapped my memory card.
Does your swapfile get automagically unmounted and re-mounted when you swap cards?

You shouldn't really talk about RAM when you mean flash memory. Even though flash is also more or less "random access" memory (it isn't truly, though), one usually means the other kind (static or dynamic RAM) when talking about RAM. There are other variants, like NVRAM (as in newer Palm devices), this will be understood as different from RAM.
So, I would say: You can't add 2GB RAM. You can't in fact extend the RAM at all (but it would be nice if it was possible..). What you can do is to add flash memory, but there's a limit to the sizes supported.

That's not correct :)
You can extent RAM using virtual memory (swap) just like you do on desktop PC.
Performance loss is noticeable, but acceptable, just like on desktop PC.

All other kinds of handhelds don't have such functionality.

Some days ago I've read an article on blog.msdn.com that "it is impossible to have swap file on the flash memory, and that's why WM5 can't do it". Well, 770 proved that Microsoft guy lied.

Yes. Unless I'm too impatient and yank it out too quickly, which happens about once every 100 swaps. I was seriously impressed the first time I tried it and discovered it worked.

I have to add that I have the same 64 MB swapfile set up on all my cards; that might help.

Do you mean this one?

Some nice 770 advocacy in the reactions, just search for "770".

Who's "Neil", BTW?

*cough* :)

Busted!!! :D

Having problems formatting a 2gb card
 

Any idea why I can't seem to format the card as per the instructions?.
I bought a 2gb kingston mmc mobile card and tried to format it on the 770 with file manager.
The memory card comes up gray and when I try to clilck on it I either get 'card corrupted' or 'no memory card inserted."
Any suggestions. I am a areal newbie. :confused:

No, you can't extend RAM. RAM is a physical resource of a very specific kind (as explained earlier). What you can extend is virtual memory itself, you don't extend RAM by adding virtual memory. You extend virtual memory by adding swap, so that your total virtual memory is the sum total of your RAM and your swap (on e.g. Linux and IRIX based OS'es. It's a bit different on AIX, for example.)