BasicMicro - Forums

Hi ken,

I'm doing a project that's going to use eeprom. According to the Atom manual the eeprom has a limited life - does this apply ONLY to WRITE operations?
ie does the READ function have no effect on eeprom life?

Cheers, Richard

Reads have no effect on the life of the eeprom, only writes. You can get specific write life cycles in the specific processor datasheets(eg 16F88X for Atom or H8-36XX for AtomPro).

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Tech Support
Basic Micro - Robotic Technology Evolved

The EEPROM's lifespan is dependent on construction type, temperature and voltages. As a rule of thumb, you can reasonably expect 100,000 to one million writes. If you're writing sample data to an EEPROM once a second, and you're good for a million writes, your device will last 11.57 days. If you want to store a few bytes of info every once in a while, you're good for a verry long time to come.

The Atoms have 256 bytes of EEPROM storage. If you need more, or even LOTS more (64K bytes, anyone?), than consider using an external device in a seperate socket. There are 8-pin versions that use I2C or SPI (also known as microwire) serial protocols to communicate with. These only need two or four connections to the Atom, and a couple of pullup resistors, 4.7K to 20K Ohms.

Go to the Nano section to find sample code and schematics for both types. These are saved as "stickies", so will be close to the top of the postings.
Have fun with your project.

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kenjj
http://blog.basicmicro.com/
http://kjennejohn.wordpress.com/

Thank you both for your prompt replies (and advice) - much appreciated.
Richard