TiVo Community Forums Archives - newbie Ram question

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newbie Ram question
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Posted by: jongsuk

I have noted a few users have installed xtra RAM in their TIVO why what advantages does this give? if its worth doing what type of RAM is used.

Many thanks

John

Posted by: racingclub

it can speed up the responsiveness of the TiVo

looks like a tricky job tho - you have to solder the chip onto the board yourself (or find someone else you trust)

have a look at

http://www.9thtee.com/tivomemory.htm

Posted by: mrtickle

It doesn't make any difference at all to the responsiveness really. It speeds up indexing after the daily calls, because it needs to swap less. Perhaps it speeds up the indexing in the Season Pass manager too, but not by much! Other than that I couldn't tell a difference.

Posted by: davrouk

Will it make any difference to the UI if TiVoWeb and TivoFTPd are running in the background? For $20 from 9thtee.com, I may as well get them with my order if they are going to do something for my setup.

Posted by: Tony Hoyle

I wouldn' t have thought TivoWeb and TivoFTPd would make much difference to the amount of free memory (which is plenty most of the time).

Considering how hard it is to install for mimimal benefit I'd give it a miss.

Posted by: mrtickle

I have those running on mine - so if someone without the ram upgrade would like to post how much ram they have free/used/swapped (from the tivoweb Info module) we can compare.

Posted by: ragle_ gumm

This thread is addressing the same question I have (ie is a RAM upgrade worth it). It seems there is little reason to indulge in the upgrade as opposed to the hard drive upgrade which has obvious advantages.

I'd be interested to see the comparison between 32mb and standard RAM that mrtickle mentions, however.

Posted by: ddub

quote:
Originally posted by mrtickle
I have those running on mine - so if someone without the ram upgrade would like to post how much ram they have free/used/swapped (from the tivoweb Info module) we can compare.

I have those running with the standard 16MB, here are my machines details

Memory Statistics:
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 14147584 14016512 131072 1632559104 172032 3538944
Swap: 67104768 4161536 62943232
MemTotal: 13816 kB
MemFree: 128 kB
MemShared: 1594296 kB
Buffers: 168 kB
Cached: 3456 kB
SwapTotal: 65532 kB
SwapFree: 61468 kB

Posted by: mrtickle

Ta, here's mine:

code:
Memory Statistics:
        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  30695424 30261248   434176 121286656  5152768  7933952
Swap: 133820416        0 133820416
MemTotal:     29976 kB
MemFree:        424 kB
MemShared:   118444 kB
Buffers:       5032 kB
Cached:        7748 kB
SwapTotal:   130684 kB
SwapFree:    130684 kB

Posted by: ddub

Interesting to see it is actually using the RAM and no swap file on you 32MB machine.

Theoretically (ie not in real life) it should make the GUI quicker, especially now showing and to do [ list based stuff ] quicker, but I doubt it makes that much difference for the hassle involved in fitting the extra ram.

thanx

ddub

(more readable format below)

code:Memory Statistics:
        total:    used:    free:  shared:    buffers:  cached:
Mem:  14147584 13991936   155648 1663758336   180224  4067328
Swap: 67104768  4771840 62332928
MemTotal:     13816 kB
MemFree:        152 kB
MemShared:  1624764 kB
Buffers:        176 kB
Cached:        3972 kB
SwapTotal:    65532 kB
SwapFree:     60872 kB

Posted by: mrtickle

no probs. it doesn't make the gui any quicker. Reading the underground forum the delays are mainly down to the TiVo having to share the drive between (a) the database accesses needed to generate the todo/now playing etc, (b) the recording of a video stream (live buffer or scheduled recording), and (c) the playback of another video stream (clouds). (b) has to take priority, so (a) always has to wait until there is time to move the drive heads, do the database stuff and move them back again in time to continue the recording.

Posted by: Robert S

If you've only got about 4Mb in swap it's probably just dead data (setup code etc) that won't ever be fetched back into core. Having data sitting in swap isn't a performance hit - actively swapping stuff in and out is what slows things down, and your memory tables suggest that's not happening.

Posted by: kmusgrave

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
that won't ever be fetched back into core.

Core? IFAIK they stopped using that about 20-30 years ago - we've moved on a bit since then :D

Posted by: racingclub

so it sounds like this upgrade is almost entirely pointless - especially for the difficulty of the install :confused:

Posted by: mjk

I reached the same conclusion. Decided my soldering skills weren't up to it, so it wasn't worth the risk! I have the chips sitting ere if anyone wants them for a paltry sum!

Martin

Posted by: GarySargent

It was good fun doing the soldering despite never doing it before!

Posted by: MrBassMan

It was good fun doing the soldering despite never doing it before!

I suppose you enjoy going to the dentist as well?

Every time my soldering iron moved to another leg, 199 gold coloured coins flashed before my eyes.

Posted by: mrtickle

I'd never have attempted it myself - thanks again andyc! :)

Posted by: andyc

Mr Tickle,

No problems - glad to see it's still working :-)
I'm still here lurking - but don't find much to comment on nowadays - having just bought a DVD writer - I'm having enough fun putting various video projects into the correct format for my DVD players.

Andy