pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Guide to SmartMedia cards, introduced as Solid State Floppy Disk Cards (SSFDC)

The SmartMedia memory card format was one of the earliest, introduced by Toshiba in 1995, when it was referred to as the Solid State Floppy Disk Card (SSFDC). It was launched shortly after the CompactFlash (CF) and of much the same size but a lot thinner, at 0.76mm rather than the 3.3mm of Type I CF cards. The other main competitors at the time were full size PC Card (PCMCIA) memory cards and the MiniCard format, which disappeared even faster than SmartMedia.

One previously unique feature of the SmartMedia format that made it into the xD card format, was the imprint of a unique ID in each card along with an encryption key, allowing software to identify each card and act accordingly. This conformed to the Secure Digital Music Interface (SDMI) standard and was intended to act as a copy-protection mechanism at the application level, particularly for downloaded music, but only found very limited use, particularly since the SDMI initiative failed and folded in 2001.

As with CompactFlash, the target market for SmartMedia was in the emerging portable devices that all had to store digital data and transfer it to PCs to be manipulated, or simply for safekeeping. PDAs and digital cameras were the two most frequently used devices but early navigation devices and early digital voice recorders also used the format. In order to transfer data to a PC the card can be inserted into a USB-enabled card reader or a PC Card-based adapter. Although the SmartMedia format is now considered obsolete and no dedicated card readers are available, many multi-format card readers will accept SmartMedia cards (but note the warnings below). Adapters are also available to allow a SmartMedia card to fit into a CF or xD slot, the latter likely to prove useful to digital camera users switching to the xD format. It was in the digital camera market that SmartMedia proved most popular, with around half the market sporting SmartMedia slots in 2001. But Toshiba was battling with, and eventually losing against, CompactFlash and xD at the high end and SecureDigital at the low end.

Two voltages were available in the SmartMedia format, first 5V and then 3.3V, identified by different notches, and care should be taken to ensure that card readers (particularly cheap multi-format ones) have the necessary detection mechanisms in their slots to reject cards of the incorrect voltage. The cards were also available in 16, 32 and 64-bit bus widths, allowing capacities of up to 128MB. This size limit was to prove the format’s downfall. Although a new specification was launched in 2002 to allow 256MB on a card, Toshiba had already realised that they couldn’t manage their own card format without the involvement of the mass-market memory manufacturers and in 1999 had entered into a collaboration with Matsushita (aka Panasonic) and SanDisk on the SecureDigital development. With Fuji and Olympus, previously strong SmartMedia supporters, throwing their weight behind the xD card format, SmartMedia disappeared from the market within a few years. It appears unlikely that any 256MB cards were ever manufactured and the SSFDC forum, the independent (from Toshiba, that is) body set up to promote the format was wound up at its final AGM in May 2007.

  • Hard disk (hard drive) construction
  • Hard Disk (hard drive) Operation
  • Hard disk (hard drive) format – the tracks and sectors of the hard disk
  • File systems (FAT, FAT8, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS) explained
  • Hard Disk (Hard Drive) Performance – transfer rates, latency and seek times
  • Hard Disk AV Capability
  • Hard Disk Capacity
  • Hard Disk Capacity Barriers
  • Hard Disk MR Technology
  • Hard Disk GMR Technology
  • Hard Disk Pixie Dust
  • Hard Disk Longitudinal Recording
  • Hard Disk Perpendicular Recording
  • RAID – Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks
  • Hard Disk SMART Drives
  • Hard Disk MicroDrives
  • Hard Disk OAW Technology
  • Hard Disk PLEDM
  • Hard Disk Millipede
  • Guide to Western Digital’s GreenPower hard drive technology
  • Solid state hard drive (SSD) technology guide

Filed Under: Portable RAM Tagged With: memory cards, mobile RAM, portable RAM, Smart Media, SmartMedia, Solid State Floppy Disk Card, SSFDC

Latest Articles

NetBurst – Pentium 4 7th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture

NetBurst is the name Intel gave to the new architecture that succeeded its P6 microarchitecture. The concept behind NetBurst was to improve the throughput, improve the efficiency of the out-of-order execution engine, and to create a processor that can reach much higher frequencies with … [Read More...]

Blackberry Will Buy Your iPhone, Agree?

So it’s true, Blackberry wants to buy your iPhone for up to $550 and you still get Blackberry Passport. Checking the price of iPhone 6 now at Amazon, it costs $789 (16 GB) and $1,054 for the 128 GB while the Blackberry Passport’s price is $599.99 (16 GB) and $645 for the 32 GB. The price of the … [Read More...]

Bitdefender Total Security Review

PROS: All products are combined into one for PC security,plus systems tools for PC performance. CONS: Since the program scans your computer system before it fully downloads to make sure there is no viruses or malware, it takes awhile to completely download. OVERVIEW: Bitdefender … [Read More...]

Comments

  1. Jon says

    November 5, 2011 at 5:54 am

    Couple of corrections.
    1) As of this writing (2011/11/05), you can still buy dedicated 3.3 volt Smartmedia readers.
    2) There is no such thing as a Smartmedia adapter for xD-Picture Card slots, it’s the other way around – xD cards can be used in some devices that will accept a xD to Smartmedia card adapter but are still limited to the device’s maximum card capacity.

    Additional notes:
    The largest 5 volt SM cards made were 4MB.
    Not all devices will accept all capacities of SM cards due to the fact that the hardware and firmware in the device must be able to support the card.

20 Cool Creative Commons Photographs About the Future of AI

AI technology is starting to have a huge impact on our lives. The market value for AI is estimated to have been worth $279.22 billion in 2024 and it … [Read More...]

13 Impressive Stats on the Future of AI

AI technology is starting to become much more important in our everyday lives. Many businesses are using it as well. While he has created a lot of … [Read More...]

Graphic Designers on Reddit Share their Views of AI

There are clearly a lot of positive things about AI. However, it is not a good thing for everyone. One of the things that many people are worried … [Read More...]

Redditors Talk About the Impact of AI on Freelance Writers

AI technology has had a huge impact on our lives. A 2023 survey by Pew Research found that 56% of people use AI at least once a day or once a week. … [Read More...]

11 Most Popular Books on Perl Programming

Perl is not the most popular programming language. It has only one million users, compared to 12 million that use Python. However, it has a lot of … [Read More...]

10 Exceptional Books on ChatGPT that Will Blow Your Mind

ChatGPT is a powerful new AI tool that is taking the world by storm. You are going to find a lot of amazing books that will teach you how to make the … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

Get the Facts on Virtualization

If you have any kind of involvement with IT in business then you have probably heard of the technology known as virtualization. It is changing the way … [Read More...]

Factors to Consider When Resizing an Image

There are many things that you have to think about when you plan on changing the size of an image. You don't want to make arbitrary decisions, because … [Read More...]

5 Strategies for Safeguarding Your Bitcoin Investments

Photo by Kanchanara on Unsplash As the allure of cryptocurrency captures the attention of institutions, and as corporate financial officers weigh … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2025 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors