[Coco] 2gig CF card killed (false alarm)

[Diego Barizo]

For regular CoCo use, under BASIC, let's see
Suppose the I get to work every day on a program, and in the writing 
process, I save every 10 minutes, for 3 hours. That's 18 writes. With a 
lifetime of 100.000 writes that's 100000/18=5555 days, or more than 15 
years.
And that is if the write is always to the same locations for those 15 years.
Now, with some OS that keeps writing to the disk, like virtual memory.
10 writes a minute, for 3 hours a day=1800. and 100.000 / 1800=55 days.

I would say, safe for the CoCo, no good for virtual memory/swap

Diego




Roger Taylor wrote:
> It turns out the card was corrupted somehow while I was moving it 
> between my various PCs.  Vista will definately trash a FAT-16 CF, 
> trust me.  It will even ask you if you "want us to fix it?", and then 
> bam, won't boot on the system it was previously booting on.
>
> Anyway, I have restored my 2gig card, so my e-mail was a false alarm 
> about the write limits being reached already.  I hope not!
>
> By the way, 300,000 cycles doesn't tell anybody much unless they know 
> *exactly* how their OS dumps data to it, how often, how many cycles it 
> wastes in the process, etc.
>
>
>
>
>
> At 12:33 AM 3/22/2008, you wrote:
>> Roger,
>>
>> I've been testing flash devices as hard drives at work for performance
>> related metrics.  On a sort of related note, many apps actually run 
>> slower
>> on flash drives.  They tend to write frequent, small changes to the 
>> drive in
>> order to save data.  This has the two unexpected affects on flash 
>> devices.
>> First, since they have to perform a block read before writing any 
>> data, they
>> don't get the speed increase solid state would seemingly provide.  
>> Second,
>> any app which uses a swap file (including the OS) can very quickly 
>> burn out
>> a flash device.
>>
>> (Vista ReadyBoost actually accounts for this and limits writes.  A 
>> typical
>> swap file from Windows/Linux/Unix would not.)
>>
>> Does OS-9 use a swap file?  If do, is there any way to limit it 
>> writing to
>> the drive?  And if it doesn't use a swap file, then I feel pretty
>> comfortable saying the flash device would outlast the Coco itself.
>>
>> John Guin
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com 
>> [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
>> Behalf Of Roger Taylor
>> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 10:05 PM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: [Coco] 2gig CF card killed
>>
>> Well, I think I've successfully killed a nice Lexar 2gig CF card 
>> after many
>> attempts of installing Windows 98SE on it to run on my Compaq IA-1 
>> internet
>> appliance.
>>
>> The IA-1 was hacked through software by replacing the internal 16mb 
>> sandisk
>> (originally stocked with MSN Companion, a browser system) with Midori 
>> Linux.
>> Since the unit can also boot from the CF slot, a FAT-16 formatted 
>> card made
>> bootable and with MS-DOS system files would boot into MS-DOS, and if 
>> Windows
>> 98 was installed on the FAT-16 card, it would boot as well.
>>
>> I was trying different install methods, first putting the Win98SE CD
>> contents on the MS-DOS bootable CF card, then running setup.exe from 
>> the DOS
>> prompt on the IA-1.  This worked perfect up until it kept locking up far
>> into the install when the plug and play detection was happening.  Then I
>> installed WIndows on the CF from my PC with the CF card connected as IDE
>> drive 0, primary, using an IDE to CF adaptor.  This worked great and 
>> Windows
>> and the PC both thought it was a real drive.
>>
>> I did so many installs and formats, that I think I reached the ~300,000
>> erase/write limit of the card.
>>
>> My question is, with the IDE interfaces in use and people using CF 
>> cards as
>> their main CoCo HD, how long would you expect the card to make it as 
>> a hard
>> drive knowing that the cards were designed with a limited number of 
>> writes
>> possible, and also when the card reaches this point, is it readable-only
>> then?  Mine can't even be accessed now.
>>
>> It seems to me that more and more people are trying to use CF cards 
>> as hard
>> drive solutions for embedded systems and even for their computers.  
>> This has
>> got to be the business to get into?  :)  Think about it, they've 
>> designed a
>> card that really shouldn't be any different than a memory stick in 
>> what they
>> do (store memory and read it), but for some reason the CF's have a 
>> dying day
>> somewhere in the future, sooner or later, depending on your use.  
>> They know
>> very well that people are trying to use them as hard drives on various
>> systems, and that unless it's an embedded solution like Windows has done
>> with a version of CE to limit the # of commits to the card, it's a 
>> dead card
>> the day you buy it.  I don't think they're worth messing with.
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
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