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isnt small disk-drive storage Flash memory

R

rookie1010

Senior member
Hello

I came across this statement regarding the ipod nano

The iPod Nano is the biggest revolution,? Jobs said. By replacing Mini, which accounts for more than half of iPods currently sold, Apple risked a revenue shortfall had the new product been delayed, Jobs said. The Nano reflects innovations.Apple unveils new iPod Nano

He focused on shifting away from small disk-drive storage device in iPod Mini to the solid-state flash memory at the heart of Nano. The custom chips and miniaturised circuit board used in Nano had also been potential stumbling blocks.

are the small disk memories in the mini's not flash memories?
 
iPod ( 20GB/60GB Versions ) - IDE Harddrive - Spinning Platters and Moving Heads

iPod Mini - Hitachi Microdrive ( Compact Flash Style Package CF/IDE Interface ) - Spinning Platters and Moving Heads

iPod Shuffle/Nano - NAND Flash Memory - Solid State Storage / No Moving Parts
 
Quoted as 14 hours but I'd imagine you could do better. Depends on backlight usage and how much fiddling you do with it, like anything else.
 
The mini has a micro-hard drive. I believe it was made by either Toshiba or Samsung, but I'm not sure. Battery life is anyones guess, Pabster said 14 hours but we shall see.
 
eek a samsug hard drive,
does it fail

jokes apart, is the minidrive a minaiture version of a IDE hard drive

would not that movement (guy with ipod walking aound) mess up the internals of the hard drive ?
 
Originally posted by: rookie1010
eek a samsug hard drive,
does it fail

jokes apart, is the minidrive a minaiture version of a IDE hard drive

would not that movement (guy with ipod walking aound) mess up the internals of the hard drive ?
Click to expand...

Pretty much so, yes. The mini I know there is a version of linux that runs on Ipods, and when the kernel boots up (I have Linux on my mini) it is recognzed as IDE1, hda. Kind of cool. The mini hard drives that we have now can take quite a beating, so walking around with the drive hardley hits its G impact level.

Plus the drive stays off most of the time in the mini, as I can hear it spin up when loading a song. I am guessing it saves it to RAM (the iPod has 32MB of Ram) to conserve battery life.

I came accross this site just the other day: http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0908/nano.htm. It's Japanese but someone has disected a Nano already. Notice the single Samsung chip. That is the 4GB memory chip... amazing how small they are.
 
Samsung just came out with a 16 Gigabit Flash IC -

Slashdot: Samsung Releases 16Gb Flash IC

"According to the company, the cell size of the fingernail-sized flash chip has been reduced about 25 percent from that of the 60 nm 8 Gbit NAND: The new 50 nm flash memory contains cells that measure 0.00625 square microns per bit. The 16 Gbit device holds 16.4 billion functional transistors, Samsung said. "

Jesus, thats a lot of transistors.

Link to a Dissected iPod Nano:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars
 
kool

so the nano has samsung memories in it.

i did not quite get the workig of the micro device, you mean to say that the micro has 32 MB of the SRAM variety of RAM. how does saving it to RAM from the hard disk conserve battery life. i am not sure how the hard disk works
 
Originally posted by: rookie1010
kool

so the nano has samsung memories in it.

i did not quite get the workig of the micro device, you mean to say that the micro has 32 MB of the SRAM variety of RAM. how does saving it to RAM from the hard disk conserve battery life. i am not sure how the hard disk works
Click to expand...


The RAM acts as a buffer - if you were to play a song off a harddrive with no buffer, the harddrive would need to spin for the entire 3 minutes (let's say) of the song. But since a harddrive is many times faster than music, if there IS a buffer then the harddrive spins for a few seconds, reads the entire song into the buffer, and then stops spinning. When the song runs out, the harddrive powers back up, resumes, spinning, and then reads the next song. Or songs, if playing from a playlist...and then goes back to sleep.

Future Shock
 
walking normally with a CF microdrive would not affect the ipod mini. they are designed to take the subtle movements. running on the otherhand... very bad.
 
Originally posted by: Mday
walking normally with a CF microdrive would not affect the ipod mini. they are designed to take the subtle movements. running on the otherhand... very bad.
Click to expand...

I've never tried running with my mini, but I have walked with it alot. No problems. Apple seems to be marketing the Nano for being used while excersising, especially for jogging, since they have those lanyard headphones now.
 
Originally posted by: Future Shock


The RAM acts as a buffer - if you were to play a song off a harddrive with no buffer, the harddrive would need to spin for the entire 3 minutes (let's say) of the song. But since a harddrive is many times faster than music, if there IS a buffer then the harddrive spins for a few seconds, reads the entire song into the buffer, and then stops spinning. When the song runs out, the harddrive powers back up, resumes, spinning, and then reads the next song. Or songs, if playing from a playlist...and then goes back to sleep.

Future Shock
Click to expand...


I've got an RCA CD/MP3 player that works the same way. For an MP3 at 160kbps, the disc spins for maybe 10-15 seconds, and then it stops for 50 seconds, and repeats this process indefinitely. It will of course spin up to move to another song.
 
thanks future shock for the lowdown on the RAM <-> hard disk process

does the ipod nano do something similar
i.e. RAM <-> Flash

you guys mean that it is not good to job with an ipod micro, i guess with the ipod nano, one could job and sprint

what is a lanyard headphones?

i guess solid state hard drive is another word for flash hard drive?
 
is the nano so thin because of the flash memory usage
does htis mean that if say the archos uses flash memories, it will become real thin?

this is a copy paste of reuters,

"Flash gives us more room for design and for making the products more portable and smaller," says Peter Weedfald, senior VP of sales and marketing for Samsung's Consumer Electronics group.

These size and design benefits must combine with low price if portable digital music devices are ever going to trump portable CD players, analysts say.

"If you could get a device that had enough capacity to be interesting, with good battery life and cool form factor, and sell (it) for $50, this market will explode," Card says. "It's pretty easy to imagine a flash-based device in a year or two hitting those kinds of price points."
Click to expand...
 
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