[avrdude-dev] Anybody still using the cycle counter (options -y / -Y)?

[Joerg Wunsch]

The erase cycle counter, stored in the last 4 EEPROM cells of the
device, might have been a neat idea by its time.  However, I think the
days of its usefulness have long since been past.  Nobody really cares
about flash wear by normal programming cycles these days (those who do
care about it usually rewrite the flash from within the firmware
itself), the typical flash endurance is much longer than the initial
1000 cycles the first AVRs have been guaranteeing some 10+ years ago.

Still, AVRDUDE always attempted to read the last 4 EEPROM cells at
startup, trying to figure out whether they would possibly contain a
cycle counter, just to announce this on the console.  This EEPROM
readout was always done, and could not be prevented by any of the
command-line options.  This might, among others, annoy overly
sensible bootloaders and such.

I just dropped that default readout, and restricted it to the
situation where do_cycles is set, i.e. when explicitly requested by a
-y or -Y option.  I hope nobody is sad about that change. ;-)
-- 
cheers, J"org               .-.-.   --... ...--   -.. .  DL8DTL

http://www.sax.de/~joerg/                        NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)