https://petapixel.com/2026/03/27/so...ire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage/
Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due to Flash Shortage

I wonder if my stash of 128 to 512MB SD cards are finally going to be worth something?

It's so hard to throw them away.

 

128MB? You are so rich!
The other day I found a 4MB memory stick.

Let me see if I find it again and post a photo.

 

128MB? You are so rich!
The other day I found a 4MB memory stick.

Let me see if I find it again and post a photo.

I didn't even know that they ever made a 4 MB thumb drive. I think the smallest I've ever seen is 8 MB. The first one I ever bought was a 16 MB. I jumped on the chance to buy one at a conference because they were selling it for under $100. I think this was in 2000.

 

These are the oldest cards I've got: PCMCIA for an old mp3 player.

Edit: compact flash. IIRC, I had to use a PCMCIA adapter to write to them.

 

Ha. Found it!

 

My old 486 tablet PCMCIA Linux drive and memory card.


PCI adapter for PCMCIA, I also have a PCI-E to PCI slot adapter for the card.
.

 

I didn't even know that they ever made a 4 MB thumb drive. I think the smallest I've ever seen is 8 MB. The first one I ever bought was a 16 MB. I jumped on the chance to buy one at a conference because they were selling it for under $100. I think this was in 2000.

Hi,

Those were definitely not the days

I just hope we don't get a repeat of that kind of pricing. I fear market manipulation.

 

No thumb drive. But a Memory Stick from a Sony camera that I got back in 1999.

Boy! I loved the 640x480 image resolution!

 

No thumb drive. But a Memory Stick from a Sony camera that I got back in 1999.

Boy! I loved the 640x480 image resolution!
View attachment 365393

Sony Cybershot. I got one, too.

 

For the old Fuji/Olympus cameras.

These guys were pretty quick to store pictures in the day.

 

No thumb drive. But a Memory Stick from a Sony camera that I got back in 1999.

Boy! I loved the 640x480 image resolution!
View attachment 365393

Oh yes, the days of the first memory sticks. I had some very small ones too, not sure where they are now. But I think my smallest one might have been 100MB. I was happy to get it at the time ha ha.

This reminds me of the really old days of the first computers too. The TRS80 was a full computer with a whopping 16k of RAM and used 5.25 inch floppy drives. I think you could upgrade to 64k but it was expensive. The hard drive was $400 USD and had a huge capacity: 4MB ! Ha ha. The screen was a green CRT.
I can't believe all the stuff I was able to do with that though. Circuits analysis, word processor, spreadsheet, checking account manager.
The BASIC interpreter that came with it only did 8 digit float trig math so I had to use a program to get what we have today which is at least 16 digits for everything. Luckily the interpreter did 16 digits add, subtract, multiply and divide.

 

Oh yes, the days of the first memory sticks. I had some very small ones too, not sure where they are now. But I think my smallest one might have been 100MB. I was happy to get it at the time ha ha.

This reminds me of the really old days of the first computers too. The TRS80 was a full computer with a whopping 16k of RAM and used 5.25 inch floppy drives. I think you could upgrade to 64k but it was expensive. The hard drive was $400 USD and had a huge capacity: 4MB ! Ha ha. The screen was a green CRT.
I can't believe all the stuff I was able to do with that though. Circuits analysis, word processor, spreadsheet, checking account manager.
The BASIC interpreter that came with it only did 8 digit float trig math so I had to use a program to get what we have today which is at least 16 digits for everything. Luckily the interpreter did 16 digits add, subtract, multiply and divide.

I got one of those (Model I, Level 2, 48K, expansion interface, and a couple of 90K floppy drives), as well as the Olympus camera @nsaspook mentioned above.

This is all completely useless, but I cannot bring myself to throw any of it away.

My daughter will be stuck dealing with it all, someday.

 

I got one of those (Model I, Level 2, 48K, expansion interface, and a couple of 90K floppy drives), as well as the Olympus camera @nsaspook mentioned above.

This is all completely useless, but I cannot bring myself to throw any of it away.

My daughter will be stuck dealing with it all, someday.

The first computers I worked with had 4 KB of ram and programs were stored on cassette tapes.

The first computer I owned, in 1984, was a TI Professional. I maxed it out with a whopping 768 KB of RAM. It also had a three-plane color graphics card giving you an amazing eight colors. It had two 360 KB floppy drives. I could replaced one of them with a 10 MB hard drive, but that would have added $1500 to the price tag. As it was, the machine (plus the significant amount of software I got with it, most which never got used) totaled out at just over $5000. It was 95% IBM-compatible, too. Of course, they let you think that this meant that 95% of software written for the IBM-XT would run on the TI-Pro. Wrong! It meant that, in any given program, an average of 95% of the instructions would execute properly. In practice, this meant that it was effectively zero percent compatible -- I never did run across a single IBM program that would run on it, though I didn't try all that many. I used it for writing programs to support my coursework and for writing papers. For that, it was more than adequate and the quality of the machine was incredible. I really wish I had never given it away, though I don't know what I would do with it if I still had it.

Like you, my daughter is going to have to deal with a bunch of crap some day. But at least I'm winnowing it down quite a bit. I'm tired of living in a warehouse where I can't find anything, so I'm aggressively purging stuff. It helps that there's a good chance that we will have to sell this place and downsize in order to use the equity to pay for her college. Oh well, there are far worse things we could (and have) invested in.

 

The first computer I worked with...

 

But what kid in their right mind wants a bunch of "safe" experiments! ;P

Are "safe" and "exciting" even two words that belong in the same sentence (at least to a young boy in the 70s)?

 

But what kid in their right mind wants a bunch of "safe" experiments! ;P

Are "safe" and "exciting" even two words that belong in the same sentence (at least to a young boy in the 70s)?

I also had one of those early chemistry sets that were far from safe, and often extremely exciting.

 

I also had one of those early chemistry sets that were far from safe, and often extremely exciting.

When I was in middle school the chemistry class would have us all make black power with the classic ingredients and ratios. The best blast got the highest grade (mine I'm happy to say).

 

When I was in middle school the chemistry class would have us all make black power with the classic ingredients and ratios. The best blast got the highest grade (mine I'm happy to say).

Did they let you bring in the Remington to test the reloads?

 

Did they let you bring in the Remington to test the reloads?

If you were in the FFA gun club, yes.

 

I also had one of those early chemistry sets that were far from safe, and often extremely exciting.

Same here. I was too young to really appreciate that chemistry set, or understand hardly anything that it had you do. I therefore understood far less all of the effectively random things we ended up doing with it, nearly all of which were disappointingly non-events. I've wondered just how bad some of the stuff that got made/mixed actually was. I'd love to have the list of chemicals that it came with.