[sdiy] Re: New project idea: probability trakker !?

[Stephen Lenham]

Bret Truchan writes: 

> My main worry is the serial ram that I'll probably need to find.  Does 
> anyone know of any good serial non-volitile ram (DIP, probably a few 
> kilobytes)? 

Further to previous suggestions, check out Ramtron's range of Ferroelectric 
RAMs (FRAM). Capacities up to 32K, serial or parallel interface (the serial 
ones duplicate common serial EEPROMs). The advantages over standard EEPROM 
are a much faster write (pretty much instant as far as most applications are 
concerned) and _unlimited_ write cycles. They aren't particularly expensive, 
either. 

I don't think you need to worry about the life of the memory - they don't 
just die after a certain amount of time. Either you wear them out after a 
huge number of write cycles or, at the other extreme, you don't use it for 
10 years and it eventually forgets what was stored - much like the stuff we 
learn at school ;-) Even then, you can reprogram it and get another 10 years 
out of it. 

Cheers, 

Steve L.