Laptops as routers

[R. W.]

On Sunday 31 October 2004 21:54, Luke wrote:
> > If you are worry about power consumption or reliability when using
> > old computers I have some general tips for you:
> > 1. Don't use a storage device that has spinning disks, instead use
> > a CF card, Zip Drive/Disk, etc.
> > http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml
>
> To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I find the idea of replacing
> hard drives with flash memory intriguing.  When I first heard someone
> talk about doing this several years ago, the idea was quickly shot
> down by people saying that flash memory has a very short lifetime
> when you write to it.  Even a system as minimal as a firewall will
> require frequent write operations if it does any logging at all.
>
> Has this limitation been overcome in recent years?
> Google isn't turning up any recent articles on this subject for me.

I know that embedded OSs, like VxWorks, have dedicated flash filesystems 
that do "wear-levelling". These filesystems avoid having special 
physical locations, and make sure all date is occasionally moved around 
to prevent the concentration of damage. 

I believe that some flash storage devices have this built in to the 
hardware nowdays.