Difference Between Flash RAM & SRAM Cards

[ady]

I'm planning to buy a card soon to store new sounds or sequences for my QS6.1. From what I've been reading online, there seems to be two kinds of cards - Flash RAM and SRAM.

 

My questions:

1) Which card would I need to store new sounds or sequences in?

 

2) What's the difference between the Flash RAM and SRAM cards?

 

3) Are both the cards rewritable?

[jonniepain]

Flash vs. Sram

Alesis uses PCMCIA Cards for both ROM and RAM

applications. QuadraCards (or QCards) contain up to

8MBytes of both sample and program data.

 

The Alesis Sound Bridge sample transfer utility allows the

user to transfer custom samples to Flash or SRAM cards

from a PC or Macintosh computer. Alesis also offers 256KB

and 512KByte SRAM card for program data storage. While it

is possible to format SRAM cards using Soundbridge, due to

their relatively limited storage capacity for sample data,

SRAM cards are only practically used for program and mix

data stored directly to the card from the synthesizer interface.

Flash RAM cards can be used up to 8MB of memory. Cards

larger than 8MB may be used, but only the first 8 MB of data

can be utilized. Flash RAM cards can only be written to Using

the Soundbridge application with the card installed in the back

of the Alesis synth. It is not possible to format Flash cards for

Alesis synths in computer PCMCIA slots. Flash cards can be

used to store one bank of mixes and programs, 50

sequences, and samples.

 

There are three types of PCMCIA cards: Type I cards are

3.3mm thick and are used for fast access memory storage

such as SRAM or Flash memory. Type II cards 5.0mm thick

and are used for I/O applications such as modems or ethernet

cards. Type III cards are typically 10.5mm thick and are used

for mass data storage such as ATA drives. Alesis

synthesizers use Type I cards only.

 

Alesis synthesizers support all Type I SRAM cards with an

access time of 200ns or faster.

I hope this helps answer your question the big difference is size and the next thing is data access speed . Think of flash being like your hard drive and SRAM being your floppy .

 

 

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[ady]

So is it the SRAM that I should get or Flash RAM. Sorry but I didn't quite get the last explanation.

[Dave Bryce]

So is it the SRAM that I should get or Flash RAM.

 

You need a flash card if you want to store your own samples and sequences. You cannot write to a flash card without using a computer and SoundBridge to do so. Any time you want to add anything to the card, you have to reburn the entire card.

 

The more familiar SRAM should just be used for programs and mixes. You can write to an SRAM card directly - it basically makes your user memory bigger. A 256k SRAM card will add 4 more user banks, while a 512k SRAM card will add 8 banks.

 

You can also use SRAM to store your own samples, but that's a bad idea - a 512k SRAM card will cost you about the same as an 8 meg flash card.

 

dB

[ady]

Thanks guys. I understand the cards better now. :-)