Re: Soft game settings vs. dipswitches?

>From an earlier post, Clay said the device was going to be in the page 0/page 1
area of RAM, where it would be accessed possibly several THOUSAND times a SECOND.
That is why he didn't want EEPROM. Plus EEPROM needs an erase and rewrite cycle
that takes too long to be directly useful. For a tiny amount of storage that gets
very little rewrite, like high scores and DIP switches, EEPROM works fine. But you
then need to customize the hardware and software to work with it. What Clay was
going to do is shadow it to the RAM, where EEPROM will NOT work.

And, granted, my mag-core memory JOKE has almost as bad erase/rewrite
characteristics as EEPROM, but NO wearout mode.

Anders Knudsen wrote:

> Roger my friend ;-)
> from the Xicor page you can see that:
> • High Reliability —Endurance: 1 Million Cycles
> —Data Retention: 100 Years
>
> Let's look at the "wear-out" factor of the eeprom in this device. If you
> turn your machine on/off 1 time every day (I'm sure you're not with this
> frequency, but it's an example,) then at 1 million cycles we're looking at
> an endurance of around 2700 years...LOL.
>
> -anders ;-)
>
> At 02:22 PM 4/5/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >The problem here is that the "10 year" battery life scares some of the
> >collectors and that EEPROM wears out. So what you need is something that
> >doesn't wear out and has no battery. And if you throw in nostalgia value also
> >that only leaves one thing---magnetic core memory! (Running for cover at high
> >speed!)
> >
> >
> >Clay Cowgill wrote:
> >
> > > > Other than the possible "nostalgia value" of doing it "the
> > > >old-fashioned way" instead of using "them new-fangled menus", I don't see
> > > >any disadvantage to it.
> > >
> > > "My car gets thirty rands to the hogshead and that's the way I like it!"
> > >
> > > > By the way - have you looked at Ramtron's ferroelectric RAM (FRAM)
> > > >parts for this kind of thing?
> > >
> > > Actually I've talked to them for stuff at work (didn't work out-- too
> > low of
> > > density, too expensive, and not enough volume production).
> > >
> > > The main issue in this case is that the memory that does the saving is the
> > > same stuff that's shadowed over the regular RAM area-- the CPU is actually
> > > using the "save" RAM as page 0 and page 1 for the 6520. (So that means
> > most
> > > of your game variables and all the stack. It'll get hit thousands of times
> > > a second.)
> > >
> > > I'm just using an ST MK48Z02. (Zeropower SRAM) Cheap and available with
> > > second sources. The battery is built-in, so ten years down the road people
> > > will just have to replace it. I'll socket it to make it easy. On the cool
> > > "geek" factor list it gives me the option to drop in one of their
> > > "timekeeper" versions and have a realtime clock too. (Ooooh-- high scores
> > > with the time and date it was set! ;-)
> > >
> > > -Clay
> > > ______________________________________________________
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> >--
> >Windows:
> >
> >32 bit graphical interface for a
> >16 bit patch for an
> >8 bit operating system written for a
> >4 bit processor by a
> >2 bit company that can't stand
> >1 bit of competition.
> >
> >
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--
Windows:
32 bit graphical interface for a
16 bit patch for an
8 bit operating system written for a
4 bit processor by a
2 bit company that can't stand
1 bit of competition.
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