pip posted on Apr 21 2004 at 03:13 AM said:
"MANY games write their scores and save files after each level"
You confuse RAM with SMC.
Not at all, YOU are confusing RAM with the SMC. If you finish a level and get a high score, and shut your GP32 off (via the power button), and turn it back on and the score has been saved, then that was obviously the SMC NOT THE RAM.
and I have never heard of anyone who had problems with their SMC running out of charges.
Did you even read this topic? A couple posts up someone mentions their SMC card dying after only 46 writes. Obviously it was defective, but how do you know your SMC isnt defective but instead of lasting 46 it lasts 500 or 1000 or some equally random number before the "problem" surfaces.
And, of course you wouldnt hear about many cards dying after only a few years, most cards will last over 5 years easily, alot of them will last for 8 without problems. Wait about three more years, then you will definitly start hearing about more dying SMC's. And note that the GP32 isnt the only device to use SMC's, if you search arround you can read thousands of horror stories about SMC's dying after a year, or two (well not horror but you get the point) do a google search, you'll find em.
Even if you wrote to the card once per hour, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year, the card would still last for elven years, with the _lowest_ quality card.
Actually the smallest erase cycles are 10,000 which will last a little over year and half at that ratio.
Averagely however, I write a good 50 times per day to my card in the course of game playing on the GP32, as I already said. I figured I wrote about 5-10 times tops, but I started adding them up daily and figuring out the average, and it amazed me, and thats only the games I KNOW write to my SMC, there are plenty that do that I dont know about. Which is most likely the average for A LOT of people, they just dont realize when games actually write to the SMC. So at 50 write cycles per day, your average SMC 100,000 writes, will last about 5 years. As I already stated.
Some people write even more, some less, it all depends on how much you play your GP32, and what games you play. PerfectFit for instance only saves when YOU tell it to. Dynamate saves after every level. LittleJohn saves everytime you goto the menu when a VRAM game is loaded. Etc...
But the # of write cycles isnt the only thing. Lets assume that you will never reach the # of write cycles that your SMC can stand. For the sake of argument.
Now, whats going to happen when some fluke in a game or program, or in your SMC renders it unwriteable. These things happen fairly often in the Flash Memory industry. And I have heard of a few people that it happened to here too. Now sometimes you can do low level formats or similar and recover your SMC, but not all the time. Or hell you accidently break your SMC for some reason, it slips out of your hand and someone steps on it, or any number of possiblities, its a very thin fragile card.
If something happens, be it lose of write cycles, a fluke with the card, or some other disaster, the point is, they wont be arround to get replacements. Its a little scary.
