[Soekris] NET4501 CF/IDE Controller Problem

[Jeff Quast]

On 7/28/06, Tuc at T-B-O-H.NET <ml at t-b-o-h.net> wrote:
> >
> > It would be my assumption that the CF card's sectors have reached
> > their r/w limit.
> >
>        There is a r/w limit for CF cards? Where can I learn more
> about this?
>
>                Thanks, Tuc/TBOH
>

wikipedia is a good start.

Now i'm looking at microdrives, and I'm seeing they are actually mini
hard disks? I see it takes up to 500ma... this could be related to
power consumption... anyway to quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive

"CompactFlash cards are capable of around 100,000 write cycles, this
may not be much of an issue in a camera or mp3 player but may cause
problems when data is frequently modified, such as when an operating
system is running off the device."

I remember CF card packaging used to list the estimated number of r/w
a sector could handle before it would die.

But reading up more on microdrives:

"Microdrives will switch off after idling for more than a few seconds
to counter this problem however this means that more time is lost
constantly spinning the drive up."

"Certain bus-powered CF card readers lack the power needed to run a
microdrive although they do take CF II cards, when using such a device
it will usually be detected by the host but errors will occur once the
user attempts to access the drive. "

Again, I would test a 128MB CF card to see if the problem persists. I
suspect it wouldn't.