SHAMELESS EFI332 PROMOTION - was Re: ECUs

Andrew Dennison adennison at swin.edu.au
Tue Jan 23 23:51:04 GMT 1996


On 22 Jan 96 at 7:50, Paul E. Campbell wrote:
> 
> I'll bite this time. Why use flash memory over a serial EEPROM? I
> can only think of three reasons:
> 
> 1. You've got a PCMCIA slot for the world's easiest reprogramming.

The CPU can reprogram its own flash, it's also a hell of a lot faster 
to program FLASH than EEPROM.

> 2. Faster read/write times (overkill if it already uses battery
> backed RAM). 
> 3. Denser storage.

4. Flexability - use SRAM for development and flash for final code 
storage, whatever.

We intend to use serial EEPROM for some data storage on the I/O 
board. The processor board (which I was discussing) was developed to 
be general enough that it could be used for any generic 68332 
application. I know you could build a basic EFI system with an 8 bit 
micro of any flavor and 2K of memory (yea - lets also write in 
machine code :), but for not much more money you 
can have a 32bit system with heaps of memory and not have to worry 
about running out of memory, cpu time, etc.
> 
> The serial stream format is kind of awkward but trivial to use once
> you get working subroutines written.
 
These serial devices are great for extra I/O, EEPROM, etc

> They cost about $5 for a 4K chip, which equates to about 3 months
> for my data logger purposes. That's also about the size of the
> storage requirements I've seen quoted on the EFI list for their
> engine lookup tables.

FLASH $9 for 128K.

Sometimes it's worth remembering that your way isn't the only way:)

Andrew

------------------------------------
Andrew Dennison - Research Associate
IRIS - Industrial Research Institute - Swinburne University
545 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Victoria 3122 Australia
Phone: +61 3 9214 5033 Fax: +61 3 9214 5050



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