Compact Flash memory test

[Alan Dayley]

I just noticed a disconnect in our discussion that may just be a
misunderstanding of terms.  The cards in the photo you pointed at are
PC Card[1] flash memory, not Compact Flash[2].  They each work the
same way but are different physical size and connection.

I just hope you need the PC Cards you have bought and were just
reffering to them as Compact Flash.  Some people do use the terms
interchangeably but they are physically different.

Alan

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Mike Bushroe <mbushroe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the info, Alan. Pure luck on my part that I bid on a lot of
> industrial grade, SLC memory. I could not see that in the photo, I
> just grabbed the first lot of inexpensive 128MB Compact Flash cards I
> saw. I am looking forward to testing them and see how many are good
> before we start to upload the firmware image we have taken off a good
> unit. We are looking forward to being able to take an engineering unit
> that we tried many variations on and restore it to baseline, as well
> as repair any defective memories or corrupted firmware.
>
> Mike
>
>>You made a good choice.
>
>>As you can see on the label, the cards are "Industrial Grade."  This
>>means, at least, they have SLC (Single Level Cell) flash in them.  SLC
>>is more data reliable and longer lived than MLC (Multi-Level Cell)
>>flash.
>
>>SLC = store only one bit per flash cell.
>>MLC = store two (or more) bits per flash cell.  MLC is higher density
>>for about the same manufacturing cost so sellers like it.  It's fine
>>for cameras, etc. but not for computer operation uses, in my opinion.
>
>>By the label design they are probably from 2002-2003, which is fine
>>unless they've had very heavy use.  It would be nice to know their
>>history but, at least they started life as some of the best you could
>>get.
>
>>Alan
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