Re: Good (cheap) flash memory chips?


"Mike Matthews" <m1ke.m477hewz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1122325353.039018.30620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I'm designing a solid state HDD* (Think USB keydrive, but IDE) and I
> need to find some flash memory chips to work with. Does anyone know of
> a good chip for this type of application? They will need to handle
many
> writes (10,000 or more), hold data with no power (or maybe with a
> button cell?), and be relitively cheap on a Dollars to Gigabytes
scale.
> SMT DIP is best, but other packages are fine too.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> * Yes, I know "solid state disk drive" is an oxymoron, but you get the
> idea.

That's already been done. All you do is buy the adapter to fit a
Compact Flash card to an IDE cable. It's just a PC board with a socket
for the IDE cable, and a socket for the CF card. No power, no nothing,
and cheap, too, unless you buy it with the bracket to nount it in your
FDD enclosure. I think it's Addonics that makes one to fit into the
hole where your 3.5" floppy goes.

You can insert a CF card for 32MB --> 128MB --> 512MB or all the way up
to 4GB or 8GB, or else use a microdrive which is CF type 2, thicker
card. It's bootable, too. See this one:
http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php?products_id=380

Also you can buy an adapter to put a CF card into the PC slot in your
laptop. The adapter costs less than $15, sometimes less than $10.
Works just like another disk drive. You can also get an adapter to
connect the PCMCIA card to an IDE cable, just like above.

Wow, 2GB microdrives are under $70! They'll be coming out with a 20GB
soon. Looks like a 6GB is a couple hundred. But if you must have
flash, a 1GB is well under a hundred.
http://www.dealtime.com/xPP-Flash_Memory-sandisk_gb-2934_compactflash_ca
rd



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