OK Smarty Pants! Can I use USB FlashRAM to expand my laptop?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I think I already know the answer, but a couple of you guys are bright... I have a 512MB USB flash RAM stick. I am prep-ing my Lombard Powerbook to give my Mom with an upgraded 40GB HD, OS X.3.9 (highest that machine will go) and 320MB of internal RAM.

So I am wondering what the remote possibility of (someday) being able to access that USB stick as extra or even primary RAM in the Mac?

While that may seem far fetched, Macworld last month cited Flash RAM as a very real possibility to replace hard drives and internal RAM in Macs in the not too distant future.

If someone could write a utility to allow access of stick Flash RAM to be used as RAM for their older Mac, I would think they would have a winner on their hands...

[Weekendshooter]

From what I've been reading, the thumb drive flash memory has it's access optimized for storage functions versus applications.

For the CPU & Memory Management Unit (MMU) to map the flash storage memory as an application working area (which I think is what you're wanting) would need some architecture work done *but* I've been reading that flash memory has a finite number of read/write cycles it can hold up to which may not hold up long(?) in a potentially dynamically changing application address space populated with SDRAM/DRAM.

The Fry ads are showing off a 4gb USB flash drive which means that an 8gb device will be here in a few months. A size that big and I just may be able to start leaving the external platter drive, power adapter and data cable behind when I'm recording in the field?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks for the perspective. It will be interesting to see if the technology develops under the direction of Apple and/or MS. I was not aware of an inherent limit to the read/writes on USB Flash RAM drives, but everything has it's limit, even hard drives and regular RAM (I suppose).

[newrigel]

I think I already know the answer, but a couple of you guys are bright... I have a 512MB USB flash RAM stick. I am prep-ing my Lombard Powerbook to give my Mom with an upgraded 40GB HD, OS X.3.9 (highest that machine will go) and 320MB of internal RAM.

So I am wondering what the remote possibility of (someday) being able to access that USB stick as extra or even primary RAM in the Mac?

While that may seem far fetched, Macworld last month cited Flash RAM as a very real possibility to replace hard drives and internal RAM in Macs in the not too distant future.

If someone could write a utility to allow access of stick Flash RAM to be used as RAM for their older Mac, I would think they would have a winner on their hands...

The OS has to be configured and designed to look @ it as such (as internal memory and not a mountable volume)... It can be done through some code re-write.