Juke setup seeing lagg E-touch intell atom and CF card

[Chunce DeLeone]

Just set up a new Juke, with an intel atom 230 D945GCLF w/ 2g ram, running XP Beast off a 4gb cf flash card to Sata adapter, Elo Touchscreen, with E-touch and 90,000 songs on an external usb drive.  When I use E-touch, which is the greatest, every once and a while when I do too many things to fast in a row it gets hosed up and doesn't repsond then if a wait like 5 seconds it looks like it catches up and does a few of the camands really fast and then goes back to normal.  I'm thinking this is one of a few problems:  First and foremost the CF card w/ the OS could be to blame as I have no experience with this etup and don't know what to expect from it,   the Atom board could be the problem but with 2g ram and no other signs of slow down its iffy, and finally maybe E-touch getting tangled up becasue of the 90k of mp3's   Not sure just wanted to see if anyone has experienced this with similar hardware or software.
One other thing that is weird:  Whatever program or driver or bios I install on this rig there is an initial lag where nothing happens, and it takes longer that it should to install, this is making me think its the CF card.

[Barry Barcrest]

I know other people use those boards without issue so i would rule that out. I have 140k Albums on my setup so i would also rule that out... Maybe you can try hooking up a normal HD just to see what it's like with that.

[hattrick10]

If I had to guess, I would say the CF card is the problem.  The main problem is, windows does a lot of reading and writing to the hard drive (or compact flash) during normal windows operation.  Unless you have a fast CF card, you'll probably notice performance drops.  Even if you have a fast card, dont expect to get more than a few years out of the card before it is spent.  Flash card only have a limited lifespan depending on how many read/writes they have performed.  One way to decrease the read/writes is to disable the windows pagefile.  Doing a quick google search will explain how to do this if you dont already know.  There are many other tweaks that almost eliminate the writing to the CF card.  Most of these are accomplished by using parts of the Windows Embedded operating system.  Check out the forums at http://www.mp3car.com/.  That message board is for car-puters but there is some useful info for installing windows on a CF card and getting good performance and/or startup times out of your setup.  Of course, like the previous poster stated, try using a hard drive first and see if that works better.  If so, then you can most definitely point the problem at the CF card.

Other useful links:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Compact_Flash_boot_drive
http://granturing.blogspot.com/

[Chunce DeLeone]

Dame, I thought the CF card would be slick,  its looking like a big pain in the A............do you think a usb drive would be better?  would a usb live longer and act faster?

[BobA]

USB drives are slow compared to bus connected drives.   Use IDE or better yet SATA HDs.  If you have a space problem use a fast laptop 2.5 inch sata drive

[Fordman]

I agree with Boba,

Go with a SATA HD! It shouldnt take up too much space. You'll notice the speed difference!

Also, with that many albumns, check your Cover.jpg and coversmall.jpg size. If your using 604 X 480 or 1024 X 768 albumn covers for coversmall.jpg, that causes a small delay when browsing through your albumns.

Make the coversmall.jpg's 170 X 170, then browsing should fly.

Hope this helps! 

Fordman

[Chunce DeLeone]

I agree with you guys.  I think i was getting a little too cute with the CF design.  So I ripped the TB drive out of the case and the LACIE bottom mount is actually perfect to screw into the back of the ELO TS, and is less space than the original setup and one less Plug/acadapter inside!!!!!   I will let you know how this goes after I load it up, going to the Grateful Dead tonight, so I probably won't get to it soon!!!

[Chunce DeLeone]

Just wanted to give an update,  Changed out the CF card for a real sata drive and everything is great, E-Touch was not responsible for the lagg.  However I was just using the Fanart and notices a big slow down, Is there something i can tweak to get better performance with Fanart, the Picture I used was a big file, would that have something to do with it?

[Fordman]

That it would my friend!

Use 800 X 600 at the most. Usually most pics that are 500 X 500 look great without any issue. All my pics for Fanart are 500 X 500 or less. Most of the Fanart is covered up by the Selection and Album cover anyway, so no one will see the difference with the Fanart. Also, use the Opacity selection slider to dim or brighten the image. I have my opacity set at about 30%, just enough to see the fanart but not to over do it!

Hope this helps!

Fordman

[Chunce DeLeone]

Did what u said and E-Touch is quick again, used smaller pictures, thanks!!!!