[NTLK] Finite number of Flash RAM write cycles

[Frank Gruendel]

> Seems I remember seeing somewhere that one or the other (or maybe both)
> of these types of memory were only good for a finite number of operations

As others have pointed out, the number of write cycles is the problem here,
not the number of read cycles. But if you bought a new or little-used card,
you'd have a hard time writing to it that often in a Newton. Quoting
Wikipedia:

	Most commercially available flash products
	are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000
	P/E cycles

If you were to write to your new card 10 times a day every day starting
tomorrow, the first problems would appear in 2038 at the earliest...

Cards that have been used in routers, especially old CISCO routers, are
quite a different story. These routers used to write that often that the
cards sometimes reached the end of their useful life after a couple of weeks
of usage. I once learned this the hard way when all my notes from a
developer conference were suddenly gone. The card I was using had died out
of the blue. I later learned that it was used in a CISCO router before I
bought it. If you are interested in a used card, make sure to ask the seller
in what kind of device it was used previously.

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de