Is it possible instead of the usb drive, to use another media card, like a compact flash, secure digital or memory stick pro, for PS3\'s that have these card slots ?

I can test on a Compact Flash card. I have a 512M one of those I use for pictures in my Digital Camera. I do not have a big enough SD Card as the one for my Cell Phone Camera is only 64MB, but I have both CF and SD cards at work, I may be able to borrow a large enough one to run a test. I do not have any Memory Sticks. But all should be the same since they all run on the same interface which is actually on a USB internal port. I have a four day week-end coming up so I may try it out.

My actual thought was to free up the access to the USB port, which I really do not need to do. For me the best thing would be to use a Memory Stick (which I don\'t have) in the PS3, So I could still share my CF and SD cards between my computers and Digital Cameras.

So I thought it could be a problem for others or they may already have a large CF card and not a USB drive, so why should they go buy something when they have an alternative, but no one has said it would work.

So far so good.

Suspended all projects and shut-down PS3.
Removed USB drive and with another computer (Easier for me) I copied all files on the USB drive to a 512MB Compact Flash card.
Stuck the CF card in PS3
Powered up, and it booted up PS3GRID-Linux and BOINC manager.

I resumed all projects and it is krunchin\' away.

I will let it run on in to tomorrow to see what happens when this task completes, then try the same with the Secure Digital card.

Interesting I did not have to change the boot other-os setting, it booted without me having to go into the PS3 game console. I suspect that only 1 card or USB drive will be able to be inserted at power on but which ever one is will boot. This will be a good way to do some testing, without destroying a current configuration, make up a new card, run test and when done go back to the normal active card.

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I should noted that all media cards are not the same, some have slower or faster data speeds. I saw a lot of variance when comparing some online. My CF card which is several years old is marked 12X, not the one I\'m using which is brand new but not marked. I saw they go up to 300X. Some of the SD Cards were 133X. I saw Different ratings for USB drives and Memory Sticks, rated in MB transfer rates like 5MB, 9MB or 15MB (I guess per second). A slow device may affect performance but I do not know the effects as BOINC can be a heavy use program.

Mixed results.

On the 512MB CF Card
The PS3GRID task ran to completion, but then there was not enough disk space to get more work. BOINC began with some work from the other two projects attached.

I suspended all work and shut down.

I was NOT able to copy everything from the 512MB CF card to the 512MB SD card. It seems the blank space on the formated CF card is 487MB and only 477MB on the SD card. The files were taking up 478MB, just 1MB more than free space on the SD card.

I switched back to my 2GB USB drive. When I did this I only copied the boinc folder. When I rebooted the PS3 I was back to my old boinc configuration from 2 days ago, not the configuration from this morning which was in the folder I copied. I had to shut down and copy the entire contents from the CF card to the USB drive, and then upon reboot I had the correct configuration on the USB drive.

This leaves a unsolved puzzle.

BOINCview shows I have 193MB free space and 43MB space used, total 236MB (0.25GB) on the drive, I\'m Missing 1.75GB of my 2GB space.

It appears the live linux is an image of a 250MB drive, and linux and BOINC are limited to this space. Is this correct ?

I also see I only have 91MB available to BOINC out of 193MB free, 102MB not available somewhere. This led me to check my preferences. I had mine set to use at most 10GB or 90%, and leave at least .10GB free. This normally would be fine with GB size drives, but with a 250MB drive that 0.10GB free is 102MB. A larger number could cause problems. Users should check their preferences and probably set this to something smaller.

This makes having any device larger than a 512MB card a waste of space if it will not be available to BOINC. I\'m guessing the card needed has to be twice as big as the image, so it can unpack the image to the free space. Are these true ?

I\'m test running on a Memory Stick Pro Duo now. I found one really cheap, $9.49 US for 512MB, and I needed a few bucks to make an order above the minimum for free shipping. I could have gone a larger size but have no other use for it, so I stuck with the 512MB since that is all PS3GRID-Live-Linux will need. This frees my 2GB USB drive for other uses and does not tie up a USB port on my PS3. I was able to shut down, format the Memory Stick for FAT32 on another computer and copy over the files on the USB drive to the Memory Stick. No problems booting up and BOINC is running. I think there was 490MB of space on the Memory Card, slightly more than the SD or CF card, so it fit.

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As a recap, I have been successful at running Live-Linux/PS3GRID-BOINC on a 2GB USB drive, 512MB Compact Flash card and 512MB Memory Stick Pro Duo card.

I did not get it to run on the 512MB SD card I had due to it being 1MB short of space. Although I suspect it will work if installed fresh, were as I was trying to copy from an already installed device to this card.