very annoying crashes w/low battery, SunDisk 5MB

Brian Smithson (brian@eit.COM)
Fri, 11 Nov 94 16:21 PST

This has happened often enough that I think it's really a problem :-(.
I've had this basic scenario happen three times and it always has the same
basic sequence, although the errors vary a little:

(1) The zoomer hangs or crashes. The most recent event was yesterday -- I was
in the middle of Graffiti-ing, and it stopped taking input. At other
times, I got a KR-xx (can't remember which) and a dialog box instructing
me to reboot.

(2) I reboot, and having done so I get a message telling me that it's OK to
remove the flash memory card (!?). At that point, the flash files aren't
available. If I remove and reinsert the card, they come back.

(3) After the message about the card, I get a low battery warning. These
warnings continue, so I guess the batteries are low. I replace them.

(4) Whatever app I was running at the time of the hang/crash leaves
a corrupted file. This is the bad part. It's hosed a datebook twice
and a notebook once. Grrr...

(5) Aside from one corrupted file, everything else seems fine once I've
rebooted, cycled the flash card, and replaced the batteries.

This trend indicates to me that every time I have low batteries, I'm at high
risk of corrupting a file, and I've never gotten a low battery in advance of
these other events as a warning. Before I got a flash card, I got low battery
warnings without disaster.

Has anyone else had similar problems?

Does anyone else have a SunDisk 5MB card (or similar) and _not_ had this
problem?

BTW, this makes me really really glad that batteries last a long time in a
Zoomer. :-)

-- 
-Brian Smithson                                             brian@eit.com
 Enterprise Integration Technologies                      +1 415 617 8009
 800 El Camino Real                                   FAX +1 415 617 8019
 Menlo Park, CA 94025                            URL: http://www.eit.com/