[Coco] CoCo 4/5 perspectives: close hardware emulation?

[Joel Ewy]

Mark McDougall wrote:
> Joel Ewy wrote:
>
>   
>> CF does boot pretty fast, but it isn't as instantaneous as a directly
>> addressed flash ROM.  I don't think CF cards support UDMA, for instance,
>> so the max transfer rate isn't as high as for hard drives.  
>>     
>
> Yes, they do!
>
>   
Nice.  I didn't know that.
>> Most importantly in my mind, they're silent, tiny, have no
>> moving parts to wear out, and consume much less power than
>> electro-mechanical hard drives.
>>     
>
> The do wear out though!
>
>   
Well yes, they have limited write cycles.  But for the kind of use we're
thinking of, it would take quite a long time for them to wear out.  And
I may be wrong, but don't modern CF cards try to spread the writes
around so you don't have some areas going bad early?  If you leave a CF
card on 24/7 it's not grinding away at motor bearings the whole time
just by being powered up.
> Regards,
>
>