would it be possible to use ReadyBoost technology with a psp to increase the RAM

[ridders]

hello all, Ive decided that i want to have a look into the world of psp modding and programming etc. I find an issue with the PSP is that the ram is not large enough to do more complex things on the psp.

Ive been reading up on this "ReadyBoost" technology that basically makes a usb flash drive (up to 4gb) into virtual ram to increase the speed of computers, if your not happy with opening your computer up and installing internal ram, I understand too that it does support some SD cards, but im looking into if that would include a psp memory stick. Would it be possible to use this technology some how, perhaps code something in C, so you could increase the ram size on a PSP? so perhaps have for example have a 4GB pro duo memory stick which would then be partitioned into 2GB for saved data, and the remaining 2GB for virtual ram.

i would like to hear all your opinions on this, and if you think the idea is good or not, and needs further looking into and other such comments.

[Raphael]

Possible yes, reasonable no. Flash memory is not a good choice for RAM - firstly it's relatively slow (100 - 150 times slower than actual RAM on PSP), secondly it has limited write cycles (meaning you're killing your memory stick with this).
Also, I've never needed more than the 24MB of the PSP yet and if I would, there's always the PSP SLIM which has 32MB more. Plenty of to play with.

into virtual ram to increase the speed of computers

It only increases speed of HD reads, as it is practically just a very big cache. This does not apply to the PSP, as the "HD" on PSP already IS the flash memory.

[Noware]

secondly it has limited write cycles (meaning you're killing your memory stick with this).

explane, does my memory stick have a limited live time ?

Thx in Advance,
  Noware

[Raphael]

secondly it has limited write cycles (meaning you're killing your memory stick with this).

explane, does my memory stick have a limited live time ?

Thx in Advance,
  Noware

Yes. Flash memory has a limited amount of write operations before the cells 'die'. This is normally in the 100,000's so you'd still have to overwrite your memstick quite a lot of times before you get corrupt memory blocks (and even then only the single cells that have been overwritten that many times are dead... a good filesystem will take care of that and mark such blocks to not get allocated any more).
Seeing how RAM is accessed and written to quite frequently this number is achieved much faster though in the said application, so it's not really reasonable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

[Noware]

Thx, nice read,

It does me remember the old EPROM days, and my lack of interest in hardware (a very bad habit for a programmer)

Noware

[ridders]

cheers for all the replys, sorry for the late reply, but im away on holiday at the moment, and have only just bought one of these t mobile internet usb sticks, so i can get internet on the move.

Anyway the reason i asked in the first place, is that i want to try and make the psp do more things and play some old pc games, but to do that the psp needs more ram and a bigger hard drive, so im currently looking into how to rig a laptop hard drive to a psp and like i asked some way of increasing the ram, as i would like to eventually play a down graded world of warcraft, and of course try and put the old N64 zelda games on it. So if anyone has ideas on any of these i would like to hear your ideas.

[Raphael]

cheers for all the replys, sorry for the late reply, but im away on holiday at the moment, and have only just bought one of these t mobile internet usb sticks, so i can get internet on the move.

Anyway the reason i asked in the first place, is that i want to try and make the psp do more things and play some old pc games, but to do that the psp needs more ram and a bigger hard drive, so im currently looking into how to rig a laptop hard drive to a psp and like i asked some way of increasing the ram, as i would like to eventually play a down graded world of warcraft, and of course try and put the old N64 zelda games on it. So if anyone has ideas on any of these i would like to hear your ideas.

Forget about that world of warcraft idea immediately. You're not gonna get that game running on the PSP - never. Basically, forget about pretty much any X86 game that's not open source and possible to port, apart from maybe a few very ancient games thar ran on 386 hardware - see DosBox for PSP). Also, regarding the N64 games you'd have to use a N64 emulator... there's one in work for the PSP but it's not quite fullspeed for all games. More (virtual) RAM or HDD space won't help in either case, as those are pretty much CPU limited scenarios.