[time-nuts] CF cards and the Trimble NetRS

[Skip Withrow]

Hello Time-Nuts,

Seems like there has been a lot of interest in the NetRS lately
because of their availability at reasonable prices (sometimes).

They use a Compact Flash card to store the operating system and logged
data files.  I'm not very knowledgeable about Linux, but I would guess
that there is no wear leveling implemented in this receiver.

So, when considering how best to use the data logging area it would
seem that instead of collecting some data, downloading it, deleting
file(s), and repeating the best strategy would be to collect data and
let the data logging area fill up before deleting (the files could be
read anytime).
This would minimize the number of writes to any one area of the CF
card I believe (except perhaps the directory structure).

However, even if you were deleting data often, you still may not be
able to get to the life of the CF card.  The good news is that even if
a card does go bad you can reconstruct a new one from the image of
version 1.3-2 of the software that is floating around.  I have tried
it and it works.

If there is better insight into the operation of this receiver, or
best practices strategy I'm all ears.

Regards,
Skip Withrow