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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Binx Bolling who wrote (8027)	11/8/1999 8:23:00 PM
From: Gustaf	Respond to of 60323

Are the news bad enough to start buying or will it get worse I made a nice profit with SMOD this year and always wanted to buy SNDK. Their future surely looks bright. Now, is this it, or are there anymore court cases lurking out there ? I don't want to enter at 65, only to see it going down another 15 points. Gustaf

To: Binx Bolling who wrote (8027)	11/8/1999 8:34:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Respond to of 60323

Binx, Here are the Abstracts on the two patents. Note however, that these represent just one of Sandisk's 55 patents and Lexar's 15. A key question in any cross licensing agreement will be how key, or "enabling" the respective patents are: Sandisk's 5602987: ------------------- Flash EEprom system Abstract A system of Flash EEprom memory chips with controlling circuits serves as non-volatile memory such as that provided by magnetic disk drives. Improvements include selective multiple sector erase, in which any combinations of Flash sectors may be erased together. Selective sectors among the selected combination may also be de-selected during the erase operation. Another improvement is the ability to remap and replace defective cells with substitute cells. The remapping is performed automatically as soon as a defective cell is detected. When the number of defects in a Flash sector becomes large, the whole sector is remapped. Yet another improvement is the use of a write cache to reduce the number of writes to the Flash EEprom memory, thereby minimizing the stress to the device from undergoing too many write/erase cycling. And, here is Lexar's/Cirrus Logic's 5388083 ------------------- Flash memory mass storage architecture Abstract A semiconductor mass storage system and architecture can be substituted for a rotating hard disk. The system and architecture avoid an erase cycle each time information stored in the mass storage is changed. (The erase cycle is understood to include, fully programming the block to be erased, and then erasing the block.) Erase cycles are avoided by programming an altered data file into an empty mass storage block rather than over itself as hard disk would. Periodically, the mass storage will need to be cleaned up. Secondly, all blocks in the mass storage are used evenly. These advantages are achieved through the use of several flags, a map to correlate a logical address of a block to a physical address of that block and a count register for each block. In particular, flags are provided for defective blocks, used blocks, old version of a block, a count to determine the number of times a block has been erased and written and erase inhibit flag. Best, JS

To: Binx Bolling who wrote (8027)	11/8/1999 8:39:00 PM
From: A.J. Mullen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

On the face of it then, it seems as if Lexar is painting some maneuver - or, at most, partial defeat, as a capitulation. Why wait until Sandisk's secondary offering to trumpet their triumph? According to Lexar's Press Release today, Sandisk withdrew their claim on Oct 26th, but Sandisk filed a 10Q stating the opposite on Nov 4th. It seems to me that Lexar is deliberately muddying the waters at a critical time. I'm no lawyer though, and I only know what I've read on this thread. Thanks Jay for raising this issue, and Binx and others for posting the additional information that I, for one, find reassuring.