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Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache

Posted by seek 
Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
March 31, 2009 01:56AM
I'll preface this by saying that I've minimal programming experience and none with the Wii. I just thought it would be useful if someone developed an app that would remove a bottleneck of the browser channel, mainly its small cache size. I'm not sure if this would even be possible, but if enough people have experienced memory issues with the browser then it might be useful. Just a thought, anyway. Thanks to anyone who gives this more than 5 seconds of thought ;)
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
March 31, 2009 03:41AM
Caching is not the problem, there is just not enough memory (RAM, the fast one) for the Internetchannel to hold some monstereous (misdesigned) sites.

I am just guessing here (but I am sure it is a good guess):
The Internetchannel is not designed to have any paging mechanism, and modifying it would be very hard work.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
March 31, 2009 04:19AM
Using it as "Ready Boost" would be more beneficial.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
March 31, 2009 12:29PM
Quote
ninjafish1990
Using it as "Ready Boost" would be more beneficial.

Does the Internetchannel do anything that can be boost? It doesn't use the NAND for anything rendering-related, or does it?
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
March 31, 2009 06:23PM
Quote
daniel_c_w
Quote
ninjafish1990
Using it as "Ready Boost" would be more beneficial.

Does the Internetchannel do anything that can be boost? It doesn't use the NAND for anything rendering-related, or does it?
Not necessarily, but if its slow load times, more RAM may help, if you used it for cache it would always have to be there, and I was referring to if someone was writing a program to use usb devices as more system it would be more beneficial to all programs and games run by the system.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 04:40AM
Code that runs on the Wii accesse the Ram directly and is designed to work within its limitations (48 MB).
Therefore any existing Wii application will have no knowledge of any additional "RAM" and will have no way to access it.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 07:30AM
Quote
daniel_c_w
Code that runs on the Wii accesse the Ram directly and is designed to work within its limitations (48 MB).
Therefore any existing Wii application will have no knowledge of any additional "RAM" and will have no way to access it.
Which is why I suggested a "readyboost" type "app". Emulators run on any system with more ram then the old system that the rom came from, and it improves the load times.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 08:59AM
Quote
ninjafish1990
Emulators run on any system with more ram then the old system that the rom came from, and it improves the load times.

Emulators are Off-Topic:
When you run an emulator, you need the ram for the emulator itself and the machine it emulates. any additional ram can be used for caching, because the emulator controls the memory, not the game. Anyways, this is can only play a minor part in improving loading times. The primary reason for improved loading times is the overall faster hardware, not just the RAM.

Back on topic:
How can the Internetchannel access any additional RAM we could give it (in any form)?
As far as I know it can't. Unless I completely misjudge the Wii and how it's applications (Games, Channels, Homebrew) access and manage the Wii's RAM, it is not possible.

And if that was the case, somebody on this forum would propably already stopped me and told me where I am wrong.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 04:31PM
It would access it as pagefile RAM.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 05:48PM
Quote
ninjafish1990
It would access it as pagefile RAM.

And how does it do that? Or how do we make it do that?
(sorry, if I sound rude)

p.s.: a pagefile and "readyboost" are 2 different things by the way.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 06:56PM
I am not sure, microsoft managed to do it, as for page file most OS's use pagefile.

I am aware that they are different, but this gives us 2 options, obviously, unless we rewrote the Wii-OS, we wouldn't be able to do much with pagefile, but i think there are some windows and linux programs that allow you to mess with page file, if those were decompiled and studied and possibly ported, but we'd have to know more about the hardware then we currently do..
I was thinking ready boost would be easier, but I'm also sure it is extremely complicated.
Re: Idea: App to use SD card as browser cache
April 01, 2009 07:39PM
Quote
ninjafish1990
I am not sure, microsoft managed to do it, as for page file most OS's use pagefile.

Applications on Windows do not access the memory directly. Every access to the memory is controlled by a combination of hardware and software. This does not happen on the Wii, as it is not needed in a singletasking environment, i.e.: game-machine. Therefore there is no mechanism for us to control the memory behavior of applications or to interfere.
AFAIK the IOS/Starlet can not control memory that way.
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