> I still don't understand (and didn't see anything mentioned) how > writing more cells affects the failure probability: if the failure > probability goes up with every write to a cell, writing more cells > could also increase the failure probability (for the cells you don't > really change, the ones you just write as part of the block write). I see what you mean. But although you're writing to more cells, it's at a lower voltage. Maybe the two cancel out ? Don't know, might have to read around some more The Predictive Software would be useful Home Page/Development Tools/Software/Total Endurance Examples are given in AN562 (70kB) http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/00562.pdf "Microchip has done extensive predictive laboratory studies on Microchip 2- and 3-wire Serial EEPROMs. These studies led to the concept of using the computer to predict the theoretical wear out of the floating gate and ultimately to project the point in time of a product's life cycle when the first non-volatile memory bit or periphery failure should occur" Total Endurance Quick Start Guide (235kB) http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/TotEnd_QS_51342A.pdf s/w (12MB) http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/Total%20Endurance%20v401%20I nstall.exe Presumably for internal EEPROM, you'd use 1 byte per cycle -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist