Compact Flash memory test

[Mike Bushroe]

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