Budget Windows tablet and VIDA

[Alex121]

I'm not sure if this has been covered on here before but I'll post up anyway for anyone looking for a small portable tablet/laptop that'll work with VIDA.

I got one of these a while back on a 'lightning deal' on Amazon for £119

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linx-Tablet-...rds=Linx+1010B

I have to say, as a software developer I didn't expect too much from this, but thought it would be a bit of fun to do some work on it away from my main machine, which is a gaming rig desktop with 3 x 28" monitors....Hardly portable!

It's basically a mini Surface Pro with a little quad core with 2GB of RAM and a measly but OK 32GB flash drive as the main 'C' drive - Though a micro SD can be installed to create a 'D' drive.

Once I had set it up and had a play on Lightroom and Photoshop (both of which, work well on it) I thought I'd see if I could make it a tool for the T4 as it has two full size USB A ports on the side - Perfect for a DICE unit.

So, given VIDA doesn't seem to play ball with the pre-installed Windows 10 and VIDA has stupidly high system requirements, I created a virtual machine using 'virtualbox', installed 'Windows XP Black Edition SP3' and hacked the config file on the VIDA install files to alter the memory and HDD size (thread on here on how to do that). I thought I'd be able to do this on my 'D' drive which is a 64GB micro SD card but unfortunately the speeds were unbearably slow (poor read/write performance on Micro SD's), so back to the main 'C' drive, cleared up some space and installed it all. This only left me with about 3GB of space on the main host C drive after a disk clean up, but everything runs as it should and I still have my micro SD for my data and other applications.

***Virtual machine of XP and VIDA can be downloaded from the link below (page 10 for current links), though I started from scratch and made a slightly smaller VM - If there is interest I will export my image so all you have to do is import it into your virtualbox and you're good to go.

http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...5027&start=110 ***

I was really surprised at just how well this little tablet performs in a VM. XP loads and runs fine and the touchscreen works spot on with XP and VIDA which is great when using in the car.

Pics below.








So if you've been thinking of getting a small cheap VIDA machine then I can highly recommend one of these

[SouthWestWanderer]

Interesting.

I was wondering about whether I could do something like this myself.

My main computer is one of these (http://www.qvcuk.com/HP-Pavilion-X2-...ct.507100.html).

It's never going to set the world alight, but good enough for me - basically a tablet with a keyboard and a 1TB hard disk.

Do you reckon I could do a set up similar to yours running from the HDD? The HDD is in the base, so it is effectively connected to the main unit via a USB port. Might be a bit slow I guess.

Alternatively, I have an aged Dell laptop kicking around that could be a specific purpose machine. It's just gathering dust at the moment...

[Alex121]

Originally Posted by SouthWestWanderer

Interesting.

I was wondering about whether I could do something like this myself.

My main computer is one of these (http://www.qvcuk.com/HP-Pavilion-X2-...ct.507100.html).

It's never going to set the world alight, but good enough for me - basically a tablet with a keyboard and a 1TB hard disk.

That should be able to handle a VM fine. The little laptop/tablet I have is real budget and still runs everything just fine so I'm sure it'll work fine on yours

[SouthWestWanderer]

Yeah, actually, I just looked at the specs, and they're pretty much identical.

Any chance you could upload your setup stuff?

[Alex121]

Yep, I'm at work at the moment but I'll have a look when I get home at exporting my setup.

I was trying to get a system under 20GB last night as my current one is 40GB and overkill.

Windows XP + VIDA only take up around 12GB so hopefully I'll get a smaller image uploaded later

[Alex121]

Well that took a while to upload....

Link below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2E...ew?usp=sharing

You'll need to download it (around 6.3GB) and import it (not open it) in either Virtualbox or VMWare.

Once that's done, you just hit 'Start' and away you go. You may have to wait a minute or so for the VIDA monitor to go green in the taskbar, after that you're good to go, just launch VIDA-All-In-One and you're done.

Let me know if you have any issues

[c_lee]

Thanks Alex,

I use Linux and this VM with Vida works on PCLINUXOS64 on my desktop too.

I've recently loaded PCLOS64 onto an Acer Iconia 10" W500 tab that went South during the enforced ( but unwelcome ) Win10 update late last year.
I think I'm not alone in that enforced 'WIN 10 upgrade' **** up.
It was originally Acer OEM Win7 bought new.

I'll possibly be trying your VM on the tab too soon but it might be a tight squeeze for HD space remaining after the Linux load space used.
I have 13.6 Gb remaining in my HOME ( USER ) folder on the HDD where the VM needs to be located.
ROOT is in a different partition on the drive and there should be space there for the VM host progs and daemons. ( I'm not explaining this very well ).
The drive is 32 Gb and the machine has 2 Gb RAM.

It'd be magic if it would fit though as then I'd have access to live data whilst on the move for diags.

As an aside.
It's a pity that the Vida SQL model database can't be edited to exclude the Volvo models that that aren't relevant to me ( or others ) - that would reduce the VM image size substantially I expect.

If you happen to know how to do this I'd welcome a PM.
Suspect SQL password is the stumbling block there though.
I could then remove pre 1999 model data that wasn't relevant.
SQL databases are largely beyond me.

Great work you've done - thanks.

Colin

[SouthWestWanderer]

Originally Posted by Alex121

Well that took a while to upload....
You'll need to download it (around 6.3GB).

Ahh, yes. Might have to wait until I have proper internet (or see if I have enough 3G allowance left at the end of the month at home...

Will let you know how I get on once I can get hold of it.

[outnumbered]

purchased one of these little box of tricks,loaded your link onto a sd card as i am not that comp savvy to get more disc space.works a treat thanks for the heads up Alex
thanks
Mike

[Alex121]

Originally Posted by outnumbered

purchased one of these little box of tricks,loaded your link onto a sd card as i am not that comp savvy to get more disc space.works a treat thanks for the heads up Alex
thanks
Mike

Hi Mike,

I found it ran very slow on a micro SD, it's fine for extra storage but the I/O read/write speeds on SD's are slow for VM's.

I got a tiny USB stick and leave it permanently plugged in and the VM is much quicker.

Linky : http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultr...ords=USB+stick