Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Solid state HDD's for PC based controls

Adrian Kole wrote:

> In practice more writes can occur because
> there are often management facilities for "wear leveling" so that
> the Least Recently Used memory is used to store the next data
> written. This can dramatically extend the life of the memory if
> there a lot of free memory.

Fellow I bought the interface cards from mentioned newest Sandisk CF
cards incorporate technology to recognize and block sectors it deems are
going bad, much like similar technology in HDD's.

> I'm not sure what you mean by "full on solid state."

The disk Omniturn sells is advertised as a solid state disk drive, with
direct IDE connections, as opposed to what I'm doing, using a memory
card in an adapter. They don't give details as to the Sandisk model
drive, so I don't know if it's flash memory or the static memory
w/battery you mention. Not interested in buying one at $350 to find out
either...<G>

> You should be aware that some DOS apps can perform disk swapping to
> overcome limits with physical memory--though I do not know if this
> affects any currently-available DOS CAM apps.

Unlike many, I dedicate a PC to the machine it's controlling. The only
application outside of control software I'll run on a DOS controlled
machine is Xtree for file transfer. Outside of transfer of G-code files
to the CF card, as far as I know the only other writes will be tool
offset tables. Repeat jobs in the Omniturn will eventually have
dedicated tooling bars, so even there, offsets will be loaded from disk
instead of being reestablished each time.
Both the Omniturn and my Ahha mill have way more RAM than needed, so I
really doubt there's any issue there.

Sounds like I can go a long time with what I've set out to do,
but I appreciate the info on flash memory reliability.

Jon