Emulating vs. Uploading

[Jolly]

Hey everyone,

yesterday I programmed for a while to get used to the library and always uploaded the program to the Gamebuino.
Is that a good idea to always upload programs for debugging or should I prefer the emulator?
Does is any harm if I'm flashing it too often?

[rodot]

The program memory officially wears out after 10 000 cycles according to the datasheet, but it's likely to be way more than that. Theoretically you should prefer the emulator to preserve your program memory, by my opinion is that there is no chance it wears out.

[erico]

You actually mean 100k cycles right?
That test the guy ran on the linked site got to 1 million and 200k

[rodot]

No no flash memory (aka program memory) has a 10 000 theoretical cycles lifespan while EEPROM has 100 000. The article I linked to is about EEPROM, not flash. But it's probably the same thing, as long as you don't run your Gamebuino in extreme conditions it should be more than what is in the datasheet, due to safety factor & stuff.

[erico]

oh I see, thanks for clarifying. This is all too new to me.

[Jolly]

Ah, thank you.
10.000 cycles should be enough for...everything.

[DFX2KX]

Personally, I like messing with the emulator just because the screen is a bit bigger that way, but as Rodot says, these chips tend to be rather reliable.

You'll have to use the device itself, though, for things like music and whatnot, because the emulator we currently have doesn't support sound.

(And there's nothing really stopping you from soldering a replacement SOC on there yourself if you had to, though, you'd need a magnifying glass and nerves of steel)

[rodot]

(And there's nothing really stopping you from soldering a replacement SOC on there yourself if you had to, though, you'd need a magnifying glass and nerves of steel)

Or just a hot air rework station, some flux and 3 minutes

[Jolly]

I already have a magnifying glass and nerves of steel (well, at least copper).

At the moment I'm using the emulator for everything I do because it's a little faster than uploading.
My sound effects so far weren't more than beep and boop, so even for that I didn't need to upload.