Chip had no EE, should PBP3 know that?

[mpgmike]

High Endurance Flash (HEF).

EEPROMs have a limited number of times they can be written to; they can be read from infinitely, though. Flash has a VERY limited number of writes before it begins to corrupt the data. HEF is Flash, but is designed to be more robust than normal Flash. Using the Flash Write procedure, you can use HEF like you would EEPROM (almost).

Flash works differently than EEPROM in that you must erase entire blocks at a time. You cannot simply write to a single address repeatedly. Normal EEPROM procedures in PCB don't work with HEF. Read up on it.

I would suggest if you need to write to EEPROM addresses randomly & repeatedly, use a PIC with a genuine EEPROM.

[Ioannis]

I know you don't want to re-wire your board but serial SRAM is a good solution for no limit in writing but needs a battery backup to hold the data.

[aerostar]

24LC series is a possibility and does not need battery backup.

Serial EEPROM
• More than 1 Million Erase/Write Cycles - if that is enough
• Data Retention > 200 years

[Ioannis]

That million is valid for block write though...

[tumbleweed]

and that might work but I worry about the endurance as I would like to write many times

So, what's your definition of "many times", and when you say "I only use a few bytes" how many bytes is that?

[Dave]

If it was me, I would use an FM24W256 as it is a 256-Kbit ferroelectric random access memory (F-RAM)
logically organized as 32 K × 8. It has an unlimited write cycle and does NOT have the 5 Millisecond delay to write. I have used these in many projects that record data.
Dave Purola,
N8NTA
EN82fn