Simply using an OS that properly caches would help (i.e. Linux). 
Additionally Linux exposes tuning on the hard drive that will improve
this.  It further helps when you are using an open source mp3 player
that can be modified.  There have been multiple patches for Linux mp3
players for the ipaq that add considerable buffering support and will
often reduce access to the hd considerably (say once for every song?).

Anyway, take this answer in stride of course, I realize that changing
your operating system for this reason only might be a bit extreme (but
then again, you wouldn't be the first.) ;)

Feel free to visit http://handhelds.org

Ken

On Tue, 2002-07-23 at 22:42, reic0024 at d.umn.edu wrote:
> Peter Crowther <peter.crowther at networkinference.com> wrote:
> > > From: reic0024 at d.umn.edu [mailto:reic0024 at d.umn.edu] 
> > > Heck, on a Newton or iPAQ with the double PCMCIA sleeve,
> > > you could get 10 GB of MP3s, using two 5 GB Toshiba PCMCIA drives! :)
> > > And on WinCE at least, it  could be done all in Squeak. 
> > 
> > Aaron, if you're looking at this, check out power management as well.  I get
> > about 3 hours MP3 usage, tops, out of my 2G Toshiba drive in the *single*
> > iPAQ sleeve (the one with the extra battery) before the sleeve battery runs
> > flat.  This is simply because the built-in media player minimises RAM use by
> > decoding on the fly - which means the HDD is spinning all the time.  Find
> > some way to get round that and you have an instant convert :-).
> 
> Indeed, that sounds pretty crummy.  Not sure how much it'd increase
> battery useage, but it'd be interesting in caching in memory, loading as
> many as mp3s as we can into RAM.  Easily made modification to SqueakAMP.
> :) When you stop reading the drive, does it continue to spin for some
> amount of time?  If so, I wonder if there's some way to turn it off,
> like using hdparm in Linux.
> 
> Aaron
>