Thread: Storing MP3 in RAM?

I don't mind loosing the data in RAM, but loosing a hard drive or blowing a speaker when the CD player skips is baaad neeews. My current system has a 6 disc changer that absolutely will not skip on road, but off road it skips. I am serious when I say four wheeling.

I would love to have a dedicated head unit that reads from either the changer or flash memory cards when bullet proof tunes are required, but such a unit does not exist - yet.

The ideal solution using current technology is to boot up from ROM or flash memory, upload songs from a hard drive to RAM and then power down the hard drive or detach it totally (firewire?).

I run two batteries in my truck so I could tap the deep cylce battery that is not on the starting circuit and run that guy all day without shuting down and loosing my music. Radical yes, but also quite possible. How do I do it?

Busto

[This message has been edited by George Bustamante (edited 11-27-2000).]

I've seen some IDE devices out there that are like flash cards but work like a normal hard drive would. They're calling them "solid state Hard Drives" I think. Anyway they're small and expensive still so I wouldn't get too excited.

Hope it helps,
Blackwind

Anything's possible as long as you've got the cash!

Another poster made mention of IDE Solid State Hard Drives... yes, probably the "simplest" solution as they're basically large arrays of FLASH RAM that'll store stuff (supposedly) indefinitely... like a hard drive. The downside is though that they are VERY expensive right now. I definitely see this as a future wave that's still yet to crash to shore; the PC with no moving parts!

Anyway, another option would be to have someone custom-write some software for a PC-based in-car MP3 player with plenty of RAM. Say an average of 6Mb per song... say 32Mb to run Linux text-mode and a good player... you can do the math! If you want to throw loads of RAM at a box you can set it up with "loadlists" that'll allow you to pre-select off-roading music to be loaded into the RAM disk, then power down the hard drive. You could then off-road without fear of crapping your HD, and stuff will be skip-free. Unfortunately, this option ain't cheap either, but probably cheaper than SSHD's.

In the end when I did the math, I figured a mid-size (4-6Gb) hard drive is cheap enough to be sacrificial while still allowing way more playing time than I'll ever need. If the HD craps... oh well... go to the local discount 2nd hand computer store and buy a new one, reload the OS, dump the MP3's down from my main system... voila... maybe an hour's downtime.

Gavin
(PS, my system's still in the "testbed" phase... i.e. it's in little pieces on my desk that oddly enough function... but I do know whereof I speak )

Ramdrive is sweet in dos. I was thinking of doing the same thing with a deep cycle battery, that would be sweet. I would just have to get my hds to spin down when they arn't in use. But I can't get ramdrive to run in windows, that sucks.

You can use crappy of hard drives and boot off a floppy or something. Don't put the OS on somthing you expect to crash! You can proably get some old 1.2 gig hds for 15 or 20 bucks U.S.

Crazy idea but have you heard of shock mounting hard drives? Like on grommets? Get some elastic or something and find a spot to mount the hard drive with lots of room like 3 to 5 inches on each side of the drive. You would have to have a drive that would be on the bigger size for this to absorb a lot of shock. The less it weighs the less this setup would work good.