🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <w4cns9n.payner@netcom.com> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:

>Agreed, but voltages above that provided by the batteries requires
>a DC-DC converted, which sucks power as well. So for portable devices,
>power delivered will not equal power consumed for voltages above the
>battery voltage. 

True, and the Kittyhawk drive only needs a 5 volt power supply, so this is
one disadvantage for Flash memory.  However, many machines need a DC-DC
converter anyway as they run at 5 volts while 2xAA batteries only
provide 3 volts.

As far as I know, there are *no* PCMCIA machines with EPROM
programmers, only seperate PCMCIA card drives.  Perhaps someone will
make a card with a built in EPROM programmer, it would be really nice
for all the people out there with other machines.

>>                                      The 4MB card consumes 0.15 watts
>>active, and 0.04 watts standby.  
>
>By active, do you mean reading, writing, or both?

I don't know, there weren't any figures specifically for writing.

>Can several zones be erased simultaneously? Does this increase power
>consumption?

Yes, and yes.

>              And how does the file system do small writes without
>erasing other files? Does it require 256K of cache, and if so will
>this not increase write times by the amount needed to load/read the
>cache?

I don't know, all I've heard about the MS-FFS is that it apparently
works.  I suppose it trys to optimize writes and may use some
mechanisms similar to optical WORM file systems.  For example:  when a
file is opened for overwrite the new data is put into another zone and
the old data is scheduled for erasure, the system might even compare
the old and new data and only write changes.  Small writes aren't a
problem because they are small, when enough of the files have been
deleted or overwritted, the data is copied to another zone and the old
zone is erased.  My guess is that the file system will get very slow
(due to often erasures) if all the zones are full of data.  Even if
caches are used, it will still be a lot faster than a disk drive, and
never slower (except for writes).
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<-:(= Anthony Stieber	anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu   uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony