They're calling it a New Amiga?

[eightbit]

Either way, if you want to use your stuff for another 20 years, you may be lucky enough for it to work without being repaired. However, it's likely that you'll need to repair it or turn to the type of solution described in the opening post.

 

 

OR, your old hardware will continue to work fine for another 20 years while your newly designed FPGA implementation only lasted two years due to the fact that electronic parts are made so shoddily in today's age

[Keatah]

If anything, the flash memory used in today's electronics is one of the weaker parts. I lost a few iPods to such failures. After reflowing the memory, no-go. But replacing it, yes.

 

As part of my "computing through the ages, for the ages" initiative. I have backup blank BIOS chips (wiped to FF) and the ability to flash them. This is one action that will allow me to keep both legacy and recent computers humming along for the next 50 years. There's more flash roms in peripherals, like the adaptives on a hard disk PCB, captured those too.

 

As far as I'm concerned all flash memory is a ticking time-bomb. There are of course excepts like mil-spec SEC flash, or even plain automotive flash with dual cells per bit. That's totally opposite of TLC and QLC. You need two cells to store one bit. Not 1 cell for 3 bits, or more.

[Sinphaltimus]

If anything, the flash memory used in today's electronics is one of the weaker parts. I lost a few iPods to such failures. After reflowing the memory, no-go. But replacing it, yes.

 

As part of my "computing through the ages, for the ages" initiative. I have backup blank BIOS chips (wiped to FF) and the ability to flash them. This is one action that will allow me to keep both legacy and recent computers humming along for the next 50 years. There's more flash roms in peripherals, like the adaptives on a hard disk PCB, captured those too.

 

As far as I'm concerned all flash memory is a ticking time-bomb. There are of course excepts like mil-spec SEC flash, or even plain automotive flash with dual cells per bit. That's totally opposite of TLC and QLC. You need two cells to store one bit. Not 1 cell for 3 bits, or more.

 

THIS is why I swapped out my IDE to CF-Card reader and SD to CFcard adaptor to replace it with an IDE to SSD and put my ApolloOS on SSD. The SSD may or may not outlast a regular plattered HDD Most likely will since I don't use my Amiga a whole lot. And it will certainly outlast any SD-Cards in CF-Adaptors. I refuse to invest in CF-Cards anymore and I don't want to rely on SD cards as an OS drive (forced to on Pi).

 

[Omega-TI]

BITD (pre digital everything) the Amiga was really cool for the old analog video format. Many local cable TV stations used these computers extensively. Nowadays with everything being digital...

[Keatah]

Many lower-cost SSD require power-on usage from time to time otherwise they go blank. I've heard anywhere from 2 months to 2 years.

 

In any case, I've got more SSD fails than HDD when it comes to time.

[+OLD CS1]

I have seen unreal failures in original Kingston and PNY, then there is another brand I flirted with for a short time which failed a lot. In the end, Samsung, Intel, and the late OCZ have been my best. I have not had a single failure in either former brands. Although I do have an OCZ Agility 64GB (anyone remember them?) which has a problem which has developed a strange problem which prevents me from deleting a directory tree from a Solaris 10 UFS filesystem, but has affected nothing else.

[Keatah]

That directory tree issue is a problem with the firmware and how it was programmed, nothing really to do with the inherent problems of flash memory.

[+OLD CS1]

That directory tree issue is a problem with the firmware and how it was programmed, nothing really to do with the inherent problems of flash memory.

 

Right, for which I remain sad that OCZ had to fail. Those Agility SSDs were very nice and worked very well with filesystems which do not support TRIM.

[eightbit]

Without directly revealing my company, I work for one of the SSD manufacturers that was mentioned That said, there is a lot about the business I know about and I will say one thing: Do NOT trust any SSD for permanent storage or any type of long term use expectations.

 

You are honestly (and I am very serious about this) better off with a platter based solution even still today. SSD is great for a boot drive with applications or games that you want to load quickly, but do not rely on it to continue to serve up that data remotely as long as a platter drive will be able to.

Edited December 14, 2017 by eightbit

[+OLD CS1]

Absolutely. I still store important data on spinning rust. Even on my virtual servers the SSD is for boot and temporary VM state storage. The VMs themselves are stored on a RAID array, NAS, or SAN. If the SSD fails I just throw in a new one. Even in the SANs I have worked just use SSDs for caching.

 

Nice to see someone so deep into the technologies poking around here

[+save2600]

Nice to see someone so deep into the technologies poking around here

...and confirming what some of us already know about the latest "greatest" tech.

[Sinphaltimus]

I run my PC on all SSD (4x512GB) for a C; D: E: and F: drive (no partitioning). However: my incremental and full backups (Shadow Protect Desktop) are stored on a NAS (Synology) running on mirrored HDDs (platters).
running my Amiga from an SSD seems fine to me, especially if I backup the data regularly. The performance I haven't checked yet but I am going to assume it's better than the CF-Card Adaptor i was using before which clocked in at just under 1.5MBs a sec.

Also, all of my life long important data is indeed stored off-line on platter HDDs. I only keep typing platter for clarity. we could just say HDD vs SSD right, as long as we're not including hybrids *shudders*.

My only concern is SSD specific functions (someone mentioned TRIM) as it relates to longevity of the SSD on the Amiga. If it's going to cause me a lot of grief sooner rather than a few years down the line, then I'd rather just pop in an HDD now instead of the SSD. I can use that SSD elsewhere if need be. I never really considered SSD drivers and such on the Amiga. I doubt anyone developed any SSD tools on 68k.

Then I googled:

here are some interesting "TRIM" comments regarding Amiga and SSD: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=71201

[Keatah]

For what it's worth. SSD are awesome hardware fixes for flawed operating systems that have to page themselves in and out of memory constantly. Or do other things like interact with an internet connection with the intent to track you and feed you ads.

 

I'm not concerned about speed on the Amiga bus. Both SSD and HDD can saturate it.

 

The only issue could be finding HDD in sizes appropriate to what the vintage OS wants. Not expert in that area. But DOMs are probably well-suited for Amiga usage. And if the damned thing breaks, just replace it.

[eightbit]

I just had a 32GB DOM die on me after 1 month of use. Not a fan! Thank God Amazon made a return exception!

[+OLD CS1]

I just had a 32GB DOM die on me after 1 month of use. Not a fan! Thank God Amazon made a return exception!

 

Opinion of Transcend DOM?

[eightbit]

Transcend is generally a good brand. I have been using and testing their products for years and aside a little snafu they had a few years ago in which some of their SD cards were being molded *slightly* too thick (getting stuck in cameras!) they have been more or less on target with quality products. I would suspect their DOMs to be good quality. Just be sure to stay away from Zheino. As for others, I can't say. They can't be all bad I suppose and of course with the nature of electronics things happen. But I have never used a disk on module for a project and as you can imagine it left a really really bad taste in my mouth to experience a failure in such a short time period. I am now using an old 80GB IDE drive gutted from an external enclosure found at a Goodwill for a dollar...and it works fine.

 

As for SSD, I will say that I see the least failures with MLC NAND (very very few failed units come back), but TLC is just shit.

Edited December 18, 2017 by eightbit

[Keatah]

The unspoken rule of DOM is that most of the activity should be read-only. And DOM is more for industrial computers that operate like that. So I'm not surprised at your DOM's failure.

 

In 2004 I bought a laptop. All well and good. The HDD died and took everything with it. Fine. I had backups. I debated whether to go DOM, or get a pata/ide SSD, CFconversion, or a conventional spinner.

 

DOM at the time didn't have enough capacity. And most are not laid out like SSD.

SSD at the time was way too high priced, too new, and underdeveloped.

CFconversion felt like a bastardized mod.

 

And I never liked CFconversion. It's more of a hack job shoehorning one type of technology into the duty of another. While this is fine and good for experimenting and trying new things. Flash technology is just too delicate for such escapades.

 

DOM or SSD wouldn't have been much faster except in certain situations calling for a lot of random access to many small files. And even then, there's ways to group those files all on the same track. It's a utility computer and a high-reliability computer. And it's living up to the task. Had I gone DOM or SSD or CFconversion, I'd either have converted right back to traditional HDD or continued spending money trying to make a solid-state solution work.

 

I went with a Spinpoint Spinner drive. This drive, today, after near daily usage for nearly 10 years, still continues to function. I purchased 2 more of these drives for spares for the future and I check the S.M.A.R.T. data about every year or so on the installed drive. Quite pleased overall. Either I have a magic touch or the drives are that good.

[Sinphaltimus]

With my old GVP A500HD+ I was getting 1.5 to 1.8 MB/s - with the SSD I'm getting 2.7MB/s - according to SysInfo HD Speed. That makes me happy. I'll keep backups.

[eightbit]

If I had used the DOM like that I would have expected a short life as well, but literally all that was done was a Windows 2000 installation and drivers installation...and that's it. I didn't even boot it up more than three times. The only cause of a failure in this instance must have been a faulty DOM.

[Sinphaltimus]

Slowly getting used to customizing my workbench...