[sdiy] a provoking question about time

Tom Wiltshire tom at electricdruid.net
Thu Jun 23 14:02:32 CEST 2022


Could you instead assume some "average number of boot-ups per year" and then re-write the memory at start-up after the chip has booted up X times?

For some people who leave the thing in the cupboard for years, it won't help them, but then again, if they pull it out of the cupboard after 15 years and it doesn't work, they're not exactly going to be surprised. For everyone else, it might be enough. For regular users, it might write the memory more than necessary, but it wouldn't be frequently enough to really shorten the lifespan.

HTH,
Tom

==================
       Electric Druid
Synth & Stompbox DIY
==================



> On 23 Jun 2022, at 10:34, Roman Sowa <modular at go2.pl> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> what are your concerns about flash retention time in microcontrollers? Usually PIC18 and PIC16 claim 40 years in datasheet, but dsPIC only 20.
> I've seen corrupted memory in products made about 15 years ago with dsPIC, so datasheet value seems real.
> 
> One way to do it is to rewrite all memory from time to time, but how to do that? Even if there's real time clock running, the user may always change the date, and if it's not alowed, the battery or supercapacitor may die, or get ripped away. My idea is to clearly state somewhere, in manual, or on the device "please run maintenance procedure if it's year ending with 0 or 5" but I'm affraid nobody will do that anyway, and it seems foolish.
> 
> People have no problem giving their cars every year for expensive maintenance, but nearly nobody ever does that with non-industrial electronic equipment. That goes sligltly better with musical instruments, but anyway many of them go to service only after it's too late and it's simply broken.
> 
> I'm not very fond of general trend which is "buy new stuff every 2 years".
> 
> Roman
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