3 replies to this topic

[H07R0D]

I'm just wondering if it's possible to setup a Virtual Memory space on the SD Card similar to a paging table in a full blown OS? The more time I spend with my N+, the more I like it, and the more I want it to do. I'm running out of memory more and more often, and I'm resorting to FileStreams as temporary storage as often as I can. Would it be possible (feasible?) to write into the firmware a capability to specify space on the SD card for scratch? i.e a new byte array pointing to SD Card instead of RAM? Coding it is beyond me right now, but if it's possible, I will definitely start digging in. I've got 5 months of parental leave starting in June (Paid leave, yay Canada!) so my "work" will be pretty much .NETMF and Atmel ATTiny's. Thoughts?

[Chris Walker]

Since NETMF is a runtime (i.e. abstracted), there's no reason that you couldn't hack the firmware to enable virtual memory for managed code objects. It would be really slow and would take a lot of work (and re-integration with each new version of NETMF)...but it's definitely doable. Chris

[H07R0D]

Thanks Chris, If it's going to be a major performance hit, maybe I'll start looking at implementing specific objects within the runtime, instead of below in the firmware. Large HTTP Posts are currently causing me no end of headaches, I think I'll start there and see what happens. Thanks again.

[Mattster]

Seems to me that an alternative would be to hack the NetMF itself and remove any unused code sections that can be identified as a way to free up memory. I was thinking of writing a code coverage tool for this purpose, but I've been sort of distracted by this thing called Netduino Go and learning new families of processors ...