Don Vollum of Pelican Software has two essentially "dead" Newtons, one an
MP2K and the other an eMate, due to bad internal flash memory. It can, and
does, happen. He tried to have Dave replace it, but there is an
inaccessible block that holds configuration data that they couldn't
transfer, so :P
The reason that it happens more on PCMCIA cards is that imperfect (oxidized
and non-soldered) pin connections through the card slot can cause voltage
brownouts, spikes, and arcs...slight, but enough to cumulatively toast a
card, especially a 5v/5v card in a device that "supports" both 5v/5v and
5v/12v cards via autosensing.
Per AMD specs, modern Flash memory has a lifetime of approximately 100,000
read/write cycles. In evaluation within a Newton, this comes to between 5
and 20 years of life. In a network router, this life can be used in 2
weeks. Just depends on your frame of reference...
Regards,
Gary
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Laurent Chardon" <Chardons@sprint.ca>
To: <newtontalk@planetnewton.com>
Subject: RE: NTLK Interest In More Internal FLASH For MP2x00 ?
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 16:55:56 -0500
> What leads you to this conclusion?
It's not a conclusion, it's a wish list.
> Flash is flash and it has a finite # of write cycles.
Well, I certainly hear more complaint of PCMCIA flash card going bad than of
MPs internal memory deteriorating. In fact, I haven't heard of anybody's
Newt "losing" memory. Anybody?
Laurent Chardon
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