Survey posted 2003-04-06 23:50 by Henrik.

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I wanna see a Magnus thong coming with it!!! :-p

...because the face melted off of yours when you farted? ;)

I know, he needs a replacement. ;-)

You are so annoying.

and you aren't? bite me.

let nerdy clothing items fly...or the thongs...

There seems to be a BIG misunderstanding about Flash. However, I am not completely sure about myself, but here is what I know. the particular Flash ROM TI uses for the 83 Plus can be written to 100,000 times before coming corrupt. Now I have been told that is just when garbage collecting or when you archive or unarchive something. At either rate, if you archive/unarchive 100 programs a day it will take approximately 2.7 years to corrupt. However, I doubt anyone actually does that that many times a day, every day. Now if it is based on garbage collection, a process I will not go into detail about, go read about it somewhere on ticalc.org if you are curuious, then it will far outlive your calculator by 10+ years. I garbage collect about once a week. So basically, unless you only use your calculator to play lots of games, which in my opinion you should not, you have no worries about your Flash.

That figure is only for garbage collects. Archiving and unarchiving have no effects. Also, while TI claims 100,000 erases, AMD, who made the original flash chip in the 83+, claims one million.

I've had a 83+ since the first week of release in 1999. Throughout eighth grade I played it every single day with about 5 garbage collects per day. The flash still works fine.

One million! I think that settles this matter I mean, if 100,000 is guaranteed, and 1 million is also expected, it would seem terribly unlikely that we could even hope to ruin the flash memory before TI wows us with something else we cannot go without. :)

My calc is going to outlive my PC! Aarg.

How sad ;-)

AMD? I thought it was Zilog. :-/

ZiLOG makes the processor; AMD makes the FlashROM chip.

You garbage collected 5 times a day? I remember I had to about once a day, but I have seriously reduced my game playing. Mainly programming now. :)

Garbage collecting uses up way too much batteries for me.

Was it not TI though who originally developed Flash Technology. They have the Flash logo copyrighted or whatever on the website. I assume if that is true, they just liscensed the technology to other companies or something for a small sum of monetary notes.

END TRANSMISSION

Yeah, UnArchiving just changes the variable type byte in the header to flag it as "erase on next GarbageCollect" (right?). Therefore, the majority of writing happens in GarbageCollect, not UnArchive. That is how Archive Recovery is possible.
But I think Archiving would wear it out, since it writes to it...

Actually, flash technology is the exact same stuff used in those memory cards everyone else is mentioning.. Compact Flash, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Multimedia, Secure Digital,xD... It boils down to flash memory.

Flash memory is typically rated at a minimum of 10,000 erase/rewrite cycles in its lifetime. Assuming the writing affects the entire memory evenly, you would have to completely fill, empty AND GARBAGE COLLECT the archive over 27 times a day to produce that many writes in a year. Even in the paraoid case, archiving and dearchiving a small variable, TI kept an intelligent solution. Space isn't reclaimed until the entire space is garbage collected, when your archive memory is "full" of dearchived variables. This helps keep the archive memory evenly written.

No one thought of upgrading a current calculator in the servey?

Yes, no_one probably thought of upgrading the survay.

Or do you mean that there needs to be a new survay?

(j/k)

I'd rather have a slot for a flash card instead of built in memory. You have up to 3gb of compact flash. Whereas you'd never get that with onboard memory. I'd also like to see the COLOR screen then a digital camera, whats the point of having a camera if you can only see it in shitty grayscale, maybe a faster processer.

6 GB now... link to press releases at compactflash.org above

If TI ever did make an expansion slot AND memory cards, rest assured, they would make it so you could only use TI memory cards, and they would certainly not make them 3GB plus, there is not even 3GB of data in the TI-Calc.org Archives. I believe there is only several hundred megabytes of archive stuff at most. Around 27 megabytes in the 83 Plus section alone.

I hate just about all proprietery technology i.e. batteries, software, hardware, etc.

Ever see the movie Antitrust? Its exactly what you're talking about. These people want to make money. Im sure one would make a hack if TI did make their own memory cards.

If there was a faster processer, then better games could be made. If there was a color screen, you could make color games (...) or better graphs.

If you want all that, get a PDA. Or a laptop!! If they add all those, thats what it'll be.

I was thinking of doing that.

well, you can buy sony memory cards with !GB for about $650 bucks, more than my nearly top of the line sony palm cost :-)