Media Portal Frontend on Compact flash - Tutorial/Howto

[Zappza]

Okey, thanks a lot for your effort!

Now, just to find that USB Stick :p

[finrudd341]

I'm pleased to have found this thread, as this is something I am looking at. I am eventually looking at a muti-room installation, with a server/client setup, and want the clients to be cool running and as near to silent as possible. I really liked the CF solutions, as they are cheap and easy, and very fast to replace. However, speed is not great compared to 'proper' SSD technology, especially write speed - this is not so relevant though. The other issue with CF, which is improving, is that the number of 'writes' to it are limited, and while the number of years guaranteed continue to rise, this is still not comparable to an HDD I think.

Below are some links I have been using in my research that may be of interest to people:

Compact Flash to SATA and case housing - this looks quite good, and has a 5.5" drive bay mounting, or a spare PCI slot mounting option included:

CF - SATA HDD Adapter from Addonics

Review of CF to SATA converter - makes interesting reading.

CompactFlash-based SSDs get tested - Engadget

Solid State drives in Singapore - these drives are expensive, and are really designed for disaster recovery situations. When I contacted the supplier, they did explain that these are not 'military grade SSD' but pretty near.

Adtron's SSD Technology, cPCI RAID, IP Storage Blade


Build XP onto a CF or USB drive - some people are looking at this, and this guide was failry useful.

Windows In Your Pocket : Introduction - Tom's Hardware

(Needs the following freeware app, which is a variation on nLite I think

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

or use XP Lite for creating small version of XP from XP install CD - this may be subject to license though.

XPlite and 2000lite Uninstall Windows components.

I have only built Linux onto a USB drive (Damn Small Linux) which worked really well. Information on how to do this is here. This is not that relevant for most people, but it's an interesting comparison against the Windows XP version, which I have to say I prefer the sound of, as try as I might, I just don't like the whole Linux thing.

Installing to a USB Flash Drive - DSL Wiki

Finally, the one I am really interested in, but cannot get my hands on is the SanDisk SSD 2.5" drive. I think this is OEM only still, but the prices I have heard mentioned are $340 USD for the 32GB drive which would be ideal.

SanDisk | Business Products | Embedded Computing | SanDisk SSD Solid State Drives

My preference is still the SanDisk SSD, but I would be interested to hear how people get on with the CF to SATA converters, which are the cheap and cheerful solution.

One last thing - visit YouTube for lots of dubious videos showing how fast XP can boot with an SSD or CF drive.

[BennieBoy]

Hi,

I added a You Tube movie to the Tutorial (in Introduction).
It shows a cold started PC booting from the Compact Flash card.
YouTube - Boot XP From Compact Flash (then MediaPortal)

finrudd341,

Let me point out that this is an "El Cheapo" solution which works quite well.
Going the SSD way is much more expensive, but will work even better.

Greetz,
Ben

[finrudd341]

Sorry BennieBoy - I hope I did not cause any offence with my jokey comment about 'dubious videos' on YouTube - none was intended! I am always slightly wary of youtube videos, as they are always open to alteration, but yours certainly shows the card works well. How long have you been running it like this?

I have seen CF to SATA converters on eBay for about 4 GBP from Hong Kong, which is nearer to me than the UK is, so I may just give it a go - I already use CF in my camera, so have no extra investment there either. I have to say that I am increasingly in love with the SSD, but the only ones I have seen for sale are ones someone has taken out of an IBM blade server, and sold on eBay...now what do I have to do to register myself as an OEM manufacturer..

[BennieBoy]

finrudd341,

I was not offended, just triggered.
So, I put the startup on youtube.

My next project is booting from the network without any harddisk. Compact Flash, or whatever.
I already got to the windows bootscreen, so there is good chance that you do not even have to invest in an compact flash card and converter. On the other hand, the software used to get things booted cost many times more :-)

If I get things working with network bootup, I will post another howto.

Greetz,
Ben

[medaust]

Hi All,

With stripped down XP, my machine boots from post to windows in about 45 seconds. But it takes about 22 seconds to get to MP home screen after that. Is there any way I can speed the loading process of MP?

Thanks

[BennieBoy]

Medaust,

What configuration do you have?
A noticed that a Client-Server (TV Server) solution takes more time to start than a solution without TV.
When I enable TV, the startup waits quite a long time while loading the windows plugins.
After that everything is quite fast again.

Greetz,
Ben

[medaust]

Thanks, I have a standalone configuration, and also uses TV. My machine is very old though - Athlon XP1500.

[Zappza]

Howdy!

Here you have some information about the networkboot issue you looked into
http://www.emboot.com/faq.htm

Found that very handy =)

edit: With that, you just have to setup an iSCSI server, and have a installed image of XP on that server and voila. Should be piece a cake really, however things always seems easier than they actually are ^^,

I think I will give it a shot later today, after some more reading

edit2:
Here is the direct link to the software you need from them:
iSCSI Target (server): http://www.emboot.com/products_sanFly.htm
iSCSI Client (Client): http://www.emboot.com/products_netBoot-i.htm

[BennieBoy]

Zappza,

I already am looking into emboot (netboot/i).
I have a XP running in VMware which boots from the network (iSCSI Target)
However, I did not yet succeed with my NForce4 chipset which is a but stubburn to work with.
Everything is loaded from the iSCSI target, but then it freezes and I get a BSOD with 0x0000007B error which means that the boot device is not reachable anymore.

So there are still some issues with my networkbooted MP:-)

Tomorrow I will try a network boot with a PCI network card which is more compatible.

Greetz,
Ben

Medaust,

What takes the most time when you start MP?

Greetz,
Ben