I really like SmartMedia cards. They aren't really practical anymore, but they look cool. The small sizes kinda allow it to be used as a kind of solid state floppy, where you really only store one thing on it
My first digital camera used Smartmedia. I had a 32MB card, if memory serves. I could pull pictures off via a serial interface, which was slow and required a proprietary app, or via a FlashPath[0] adapter. Sadly, FlashPath adapters require a driver and aren't actually emulating a floppy diskette. Putting the reader into a floppy diskette shell and using the disk interface to transfer data is still a pretty cool hack, though.
Putting the reader into a floppy diskette shell and using the disk interface to transfer data is still a pretty cool hack, though.
Sony made a Memory Stick adapter like this, too. I imagined that one day someone could back up their computer to a Memory Stick.
(Alas, still a dream, as the Transcend JetDrive Lites for MacBook Pros are as unreliable as they are slow. Never put data on a JetDrive Lite that you want to last more than a couple of days because you never know when it might just suddenly stop responding for no reason.)
> Never put data on a JetDrive Lite that you want to last more than a couple of days
Even floppies were like this towards the end. You could buy media at any store, but quality of the magnetic substrate must have been very low. By the time school labs phased them out, best practice was to save your work to two or three diskettes because the deterioration was so quick.
Because 5v Smartmedia cards are rare and I have a Roland MC505 that can use them, I am wondering if it is possible to create a hardware emulator using an Arduino.
Before anyone asks, it was cell phones going stratospheric in popularity, with T-flash (sdcard) storage that won the flash format war (excusing USB obviously). Everything else was left to rot.
I really like SmartMedia cards. They aren't really practical anymore, but they look cool. The small sizes kinda allow it to be used as a kind of solid state floppy, where you really only store one thing on it
My first digital camera used Smartmedia. I had a 32MB card, if memory serves. I could pull pictures off via a serial interface, which was slow and required a proprietary app, or via a FlashPath[0] adapter. Sadly, FlashPath adapters require a driver and aren't actually emulating a floppy diskette. Putting the reader into a floppy diskette shell and using the disk interface to transfer data is still a pretty cool hack, though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath
Putting the reader into a floppy diskette shell and using the disk interface to transfer data is still a pretty cool hack, though.
Sony made a Memory Stick adapter like this, too. I imagined that one day someone could back up their computer to a Memory Stick.
(Alas, still a dream, as the Transcend JetDrive Lites for MacBook Pros are as unreliable as they are slow. Never put data on a JetDrive Lite that you want to last more than a couple of days because you never know when it might just suddenly stop responding for no reason.)
> Never put data on a JetDrive Lite that you want to last more than a couple of days
Even floppies were like this towards the end. You could buy media at any store, but quality of the magnetic substrate must have been very low. By the time school labs phased them out, best practice was to save your work to two or three diskettes because the deterioration was so quick.
Pdf of Smartmedia Card spec.
https://affon.narod.ru/CARDS/elec10ei.pdf
Because 5v Smartmedia cards are rare and I have a Roland MC505 that can use them, I am wondering if it is possible to create a hardware emulator using an Arduino.
RP2350. 5v tolerant IO if set up correctly, enough GPIO's and the PIO's to trigger everything at once, and more than enough speed to emulate flash.
Smart(sic)Media is just a NAND flash interface really.
Ah, the 2000's, when CompactFlash cards weren't that compact, and SmartMedia wasn't at all smart.
Before anyone asks, it was cell phones going stratospheric in popularity, with T-flash (sdcard) storage that won the flash format war (excusing USB obviously). Everything else was left to rot.