SmartMedia
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| SmartMedia | |
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| Media type | Memory Card |
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| Capacity | up to 128 MB |
| Developed by | Toshiba |
SmartMedia is a flash memory card standard owned by Toshiba, sizes range from 0.5 MB to 128 MB. SmartMedia memory cards are no longer manufactured and there have been no new devices designed for use with SmartMedia for many years now.
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[edit] History
It was launched in the summer of 1995 to compete with MiniCard, CompactFlash, and PC card formats. SmartMedia was initially named the Solid State Floppy Disk Card (SSFDC) and pitched as a successor to the floppy disk, albeit memory cards are nowadays associated with digital cameras, digital audio players, PDAs, and other devices. A SmartMedia card consists of a single NAND flash chip embedded in a thin plastic card (though some higher capacity cards contain multiple, linked chips). It was one of the smallest and the thinnest (0.76 mm) of the early memory cards, and managed to maintain a favorable cost ratio as compared to the others.
A SmartMedia card lacks a built-in controller, which kept the cost down. This feature later caused problems, since some older devices would require firmware updates to handle larger capacity cards. Lack of built-in controller also made automatic wear levelling - a process to prevent premature wearout of a sector by mapping the writes to various other sectors in the card - impossible.
An advantage that remains over some other formats is the ability to use any capacity of SmartMedia card in a standard 3.5" floppy drive by using a FlashPath adapter. This is possibly the only way of obtaining flash memory functionality with very old hardware. The big drawback is that it is very slow. Read/write is limited to floppy disk speeds, meaning that copying 64 megabytes of data by this means is a very tedious process, but usually preferable to not copying it at all.
Typically, a SmartMedia card was used as storage for a portable device, in a form that could easily be removed for access by a PC. For example, pictures taken with a digital camera would be stored as image files on a SmartMedia card. A user could copy the images to a computer with a SmartMedia reader. A reader was typically a small box connected via USB or some other serial connection. Modern computers, both laptops and desktops, will occasionally have SmartMedia slots built in. While availability of dedicated SmartMedia readers has dropped off, readers that read multiple card types (such as 4-in-1, 10-in-1) continue to include the format. Since these multi-card readers are becoming increasingly common, especially on new computers, the installed base of Smartmedia card readers was still increasing as of 2007.
SmartMedia was popular in digital cameras, and reached its peak in about 2001 when it garnered nearly half of the digital camera market. It was backed especially by Fuji and Olympus, though the format was starting to have problems. Cards larger than 128 MB were not available and the compact digital cameras were reaching a size where even SmartMedia were too big to be convenient. A further blow happened when Toshiba switched to Secure Digital cards, and SmartMedia ceased to have major support after Olympus and Fuji both switched to xD. It did not find as much support in PDAs, MP3 Players, or Pagers as some other formats did, especially in North America and Europe, though there was still significant use. Smartmedia is a textbook case of shortsighted design; at the time it was thought that 128 megabytes would be all anybody could ever need. The form factor seemed tiny at the time, at least in comparison to a floppy disk, which it was envisaged that SmartMedia would replace. Compared to the CompactFlash card, it was small, or at least thin, but unfortunately had none of CF's capacity and flexibility.
SmartMedia cards larger than 128 MB have not been released, and some older devices cannot support cards larger than 16 or sometimes 32 MB without a firmware update (or at all in some cases). There were, however, some rumors of a 256 MB card being planned. Technical specifications for the memory size were released, and the 256 MB cards were even advertised in some places.
SmartMedia cards come in two formats, 5 V and 3.3 V (sometimes marked 3 V), named for their main supply voltages. The packaging is nearly identical, except for the reversed placement of the notched corner. Many older SmartMedia devices only support 5V SmartMedia cards, whereas many newer devices only support 3.3V cards. In order to protect 3.3V cards from being damaged in 5V-only devices, the card reader should have some mechanical provision (such as detecting the type of notch) to disallow insertion of an unsupported type of card. Be aware: some low-cost, 5V-only card readers do not operate this way, and inserting a 3.3V card into such a 5V-only reader will result in permanent damage to the card. Dual-voltage card readers are highly recommended.
There is an oversized xD-to-SmartMedia adapter that allows xD cards to use a SmartMedia port, but it does not fit entirely inside a SmartMedia slot. There is a limit on the capacity of the xD card when used in such adapters (sometimes 128 MB or 256 MB), and the device is subject to the restrictions of the SmartMedia reader as well.
SmartMedia memory cards are no longer manufactured. There have been no new devices designed for SmartMedia for quite a long time now. Old stocks of new 128MB cards can be obtained from specialist suppliers while their supplies last. Owners of existing SmartMedia-based devices, looking for additional or replacement card, drive the prices up. The current price for a 128MB card on eBay is about £30 (USD 60; €50).[citation needed]
[edit] Copy protection
Many SmartMedia cards include a little-known copy protection feature known as "ID". This is why many cards are marked with "ID" beside the capacity. This gave every card a unique identification number for use with copy protection systems. [1] Nobody ever used this primitive DRM system, except the Korean company Game Park who used it to protect commercial titles for the GP32 handheld gaming system. This system is also implemented with the newer xD cards.
[edit] Specifications
- Weight: 2 g
- Size: 45.0 × 37.0 × 0.76 mm
- Capacities: 0.5, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 MB
- Uses 16-Mbit, 32-Mbit, and 64-Mbit Toshiba TC58-compatible NAND-type flash memory chips
- Flat electrode terminal with 22 pins — (32M & 64M compatible)
- 8-bit I/O Interface (16-bit in some cases)
- Data transfer rate: 2MB/s
- 1,000,000 read/write cycles
- ten year storage time without power
- metallic write-protect sticker
- Compatible with PCMCIA with an adapter
- Compatible with CompactFlash Type II with an adapter
- Compatible 3.5" Floppy drive using FlashPath adapter
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- SSFDC Forum
- [1] Pretec SmartMedia to Type II CompactFlash adapter
- [2] Ritek Website SmartMedia product overview, with 256 MB card listed as largest size.
- [3] SSFDC News Site with PDF document listing news of the 256 MB SmartMedia card technical specifications being released in SmartMedia NEWS 2002.1 NO.1
- Olympus Emporium page on xD/SM to PCMCIA adapter
- SmartMedia format introduction (software considerations)
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