STM8S003F3U6TR, a cheap and fast EEPROMs alternative

I just went to check my shopping cart at DK and they didn't have much stock of the common 24LC256 EEPROMs I use so I looked around. It turns out that there are piles of one piece faster stock from 1MHz to 75% of the cost. So I changed my order, of course. The part is an FT24C256A-USR-T and costs 50cents in quantities of 250 and even better in quantities of 1K. They have about 15,000 in stock at present and although it is described as an "SOP" part, this is the standard width of 0.150" SOIC. All specifications are same or better than regular parts.

This also revitalized my interest in the fast EEPROM and the higher capabilities that bring me to the next device, the M24M01-RMN6TP, a fast 128KB EEPROM with an additional 256 bytes, a lockable ID page and a minimum endurance of 4 million cycles. In terms of bytes per dollar, it is tied with the cheap part of the FT and costs $2.10 to $250 off.

So I ordered 25 to play because I thought my Tachyon Forth could make good use of that extra capacity and speed without introducing extra chips. The source code can be edited, saved and loaded in this small space as well as the additional memory for all help functions where the comment and description of each fourth word in the stack can be referenced.

Now, that leads me to mention something: What happened with Holly's wonderful finds that we used to love?

With EEPROM, there is a price premium for endurance and fine writing. If you just need storage, try dropping W25Q into DK engine. Now you will find that 8M Bit of serial memory, is just 36c/250+ - even less than your 256kb device.

The very low cost of W25Q parts, raises the question of when it makes sense to use a small uC bridge, to let the Prop 1 boot from W25Q parts? - Such a bridge could either look like a serial host PC or an i2c slave chip. Which would be faster? There is also a C8051T606-GT in MSOP10, at 73c/100+, which could be used when the code is stable. Also new, without price indication, this new MSOP10 is this new device -[Vcc wider, Flash, and adds ADC on the T606].

STM8S003F3U6TR QFN20 ( ~44c/100+), it will be cheaper or similar in price to similar ST part.