MP3 player questions

After yet another visit to a client using a CD player for music on hold, I wondered about replacing the thing with an MP3 player. Any thoughts? Are they reliable enough to see out a year or two of 8 hours/5 days a week operation?

Trevor Wilson

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Trevor Wilson
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If it uses flash memory, there are no moving parts -- it should last many years.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

**Nope. Flash memory has a life-span. I am wondering if this needs to be taken into account.

Trevor Wilson

Reply to
Trevor Wilson

**Nope - for the most part. Flash memory has a _memory write_ life-span.

I'm sure it can be read over and over again until you smash it with a hammer after hearing that !$$##)@{@@}@^$ song onemore time. :-)

Jonesy

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Reply to
Allodoxaphobia

The limited lifespan of flash is associated with the erase/write cycles, which use a high voltage to tunnel electrons through an insulating oxide barrier. The high voltage gradually degrades the oxide, limiting the number of erase/write cycles per block.

The number of such erasures varies with the flash type, but is usually in the hundreds-of-thousands range (Samsung says it's up to a million cycles, if wear levelling and ECC are used).

There seems to be a storage lifetime, once the data is programmed... it's usually quoted as something on the order of 10 to 20 years, if I recall correctly.

I haven't seen any reports, or anything in the data sheets which would indicate that the number of *read* cycles for a given flash-memory block has any effect at all on the storage lifetime or the number of erase/write cycles you can use. Reading doesn't involve modifying the stored charge at all... it just senses it via a FET.

Unless you're planning to download a whole new batch of music to the flash music-on-old player ever few hours, I doubt that you'll be able to wear out such a device within less than a lotta years. It should certainly survive well past the lifetime of a typical CD player!

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Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
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Reply to
Dave Platt

**Thanks for the info. It looks like they will do the job just fine.

Trevor Wilson

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Trevor Wilson

Only for rewriting. Do you expect to be altering the flash drive all the time, every day?

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

On Sat, 9 Feb 2008 20:00:54 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@radagast.org (Dave Platt) put finger to keyboard and composed:

Hmm, my PC's motherboard is now nearly 10 years old. Is it time to refresh/reflash the BIOS EEPROM? Or does the storage lifetime only apply if the device is not powered during that time?

- Franc Zabkar

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Reply to
Franc Zabkar

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