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

[Frank Pittel]

A further complication in determining the erase/write cycles is that the
firmware on the card balances the writes across the card. That way frequent
editing of a file doesn't prematurely wear out locations on the card.

That said what I do with my CF card in my SuperIDE is to keep nitros loaded
there and keep the files that I change a lot on my ls120 disks, Jazz disks and
increasingly server harddrive via drivewire.

Frank


On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 03:10:15PM -0500, 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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