Smartmedia (SSFDC) in the 21st Century

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2024-11-28 09:00:04

Smartmedia was the first consumer flash memory format, going back to at least 1997, and probably a little earlier. I'm not counting "linear flash nonsense that 19 early-adopter businessmen owned" here - Smartmedia was the first card you could walk into a Circuit City and buy for use in a piece of cheap plastic crap purchased at that same Circuit City for under $200.

As a result, there's a good chance you, would-be retroelectronics historian who has found my website, need to know what quirks it has that are relevant to your needs in the 21st century. I will help.

SmartMedia is so old that it didn't even start out with a flashy, trademarkable name. It was initially called SSFDC, for Solid State Floppy Disk Card. Boy howdy, you couldn't come up with a more Japanese term if you tried.

Keep this term in mind - if you're delving the depths of mid-90s consumer goods, it will occasionally come up and you will need to know that it's the same thing as SmartMedia. I prefer SSFDC, because "SM" seems like a terrible abbreviation for reasons I can't explain.

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