Memory Sticks

arthwollipot said:
Almost as old hat as Zip drives.

Anyone remember them?
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Still have a couple of those. I would dread trying to make them active again... if only to transfer what long forgotten stuff is on them to a DVD.
 
I Ratant said:
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Still have a couple of those. I would dread trying to make them active again... if only to transfer what long forgotten stuff is on them to a DVD.
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For a while there were external USB zip drives. A brief foray into google found quite a few, mostly used in places like craigslist. That would probably be your simplest bet. Second simplest would be a USB to floppy drive adaptor, since the internal zip drives mounted as floppy drives. (awfully nice by the way, since the old computers would boot from floppy, and a zip disk had room for an entire operating system, not just the stripped down DOS that would fit on a floppy)
 
They are technically called 'flash drives' around here, but we just call them 'sticks' (never 'memory sticks' though...)

As in: "Where in the world did I leave all of my sticks!"
 
quadraginta said:
"Dongle" has very negative connotations for me. I recall the term first being used to describe gizmos for copy protection schemes back in the early eighties, usually involving some sort of serial port pass-through device. I remember at least one machine that had several of them daisy chained down the back side of the desk it was on.

Even when they worked as intended they were a real PITA, and they didn't work as intended all too often.

If I use the term "dongle" in regular conversation it will nearly always be preceded by a "#@%&*" of some sort. :)
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Exactly right (you must be nearly as old as me!). Which is why I said calling them dongles was wrong, but people do - though increasingly fewer.
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
Second simplest would be a USB to floppy drive adaptor, since the internal zip drives mounted as floppy drives.
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What's this animal? I need one. I bought a floppy disk to Smart Media adaptor to use on on my aunt's sewing machine thinking it was SD and not Smart Media. The only thing harder to find than a floppy these days is a Smart Media card, big bucks if you can track them down.
 
3bodyproblem said:
What's this animal? I need one. I bought a floppy disk to Smart Media adaptor to use on on my aunt's sewing machine thinking it was SD and not Smart Media. The only thing harder to find than a floppy these days is a Smart Media card, big bucks if you can track them down.
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I know I've seen one at one point. As for if they're still made, your guess is as good as mine. Might be a flea market find, or check and see if your area has a 'freecycle' group; some groups of that type take requests. Worst case scenario, if you take the case off of a USB external floppy drive, which I was able to find on several online vendors, I bet you'd find a pretty standard floppy drive and a USB cable with a fancy connector, probably including some electronics. Switch out the floppy drive for the zip drive, maybe even put the case back on, since they're roughly the same size, and had the same screw patterns, and it SHOULD work, for certain values of work that include 'interesting'. The ZIP drive was seen as a floppy by windows 98SE, the last operating system I ever installed one on, so it should be seen as a floppy by USB to floppy circuitry. Hacking is not a crime.
 
To answer the OP's question, I usually call it 'goddamn data thingie' as in 'where did I misplace my goddamn data thingie?' I carry around a pretty complete medical and technical library on a lanyard with a couple of goddamn data thingies on it, and occasionally have to backtrack and retrieve it from whatever computer I left it in. It comes from liking to read on a full sized screen rather than carrying around a blackberry or some such. I should check and see if some of these are available on a larger reader like a kindle. Of course then I'd be saying 'where the hell did I leave my goddamn kindle with all my goddamn data I downloaded from my goddamn data thingy.
 
Ian Osborne said:
Flash drive here.

As Darat pointed out, Memory Stick is Sony's trademark, and does not describe the product we're talking about. Thumb drive makes little sense to me. What's it got to do with your thumb?
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Ummmm... it's about the size of your thumb?

What's it got to do with the Flash?

fourflashes.jpg



RayG
 
We call them USB sticks. If we called them "flash drives" that would get confused with the CompactFlash memory cards we use for audio recording.
 
Ethan Thane Athen said:
Exactly right (you must be nearly as old as me!). Which is why I said calling them dongles was wrong, but people do - though increasingly fewer.
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:D

:(

I don' wanna talk about it. :mad:

When 5 1/4 in. floppies came out I thought, "Wow. They got THAT MUCH storage on that little thing?". Now we're talking about the right name for a throwaway consumer gizmo that holds gigabytes on something the size of a fingernail.

A small fingernail.

I love technology. :)
 
I use the term "USB drive". "Flash drive" is too vague, and I think it's supposed to become more vague as spinning hard drives go away.

And jump drives are something entirely different. USB ports are not jumpgates.

Fredrik said:
In Sweden, we say "USB memory" (USB-minne). I never realized "minnepinne" was an option. I think I'm going to have to start using it. :)
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Thanks, guys. I think I'll start using this. These devices are rather "mini" and they use pins, sort of. :o At least it's easier to say than "yoo-ess-bee drive".

GodMark2 said:
It's as applicable as it was to the 3.5" disks, and they all serve the same purpose.
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The insides were floppy. Ever open one up?

arthwollipot said:
Almost as old hat as Zip drives.
Anyone remember them?
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I still have some. :boxedin:

Does anyone else here remember Bruce Sterling's "Dead Media Project"?

3bodyproblem said:
The only thing harder to find than a floppy these days is a Smart Media card, big bucks if you can track them down.
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My digital camera uses Smart Media cards. A few years ago I tried to get another one (for more pictures) and the shop owner showed it to the teenage employees like I had brought in a clay tablet.

It's a good thing I like antiques.
 
Remember those giant optical disks? With the predecessor to the normal CD rom drives?

"This thing holds FIVE HUNDRED megabytes! And there's ten of them in this tower." (It was bigger than an old vinyl record) And I remember thinking, "Wow. I could put a heck of a lot of games on that."
 
Mister Earl said:
Remember those giant optical disks? With the predecessor to the normal CD rom drives?

"This thing holds FIVE HUNDRED megabytes! And there's ten of them in this tower." (It was bigger than an old vinyl record) And I remember thinking, "Wow. I could put a heck of a lot of games on that."
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THREE HUNDRED and SIXTY KB on ONE DISK???!!!

Wow! I can put my word processor, work files, and the operating system on that.

What will they come up with next?
 
Mister Earl said:
Remember those giant optical disks? With the predecessor to the normal CD rom drives?

"This thing holds FIVE HUNDRED megabytes! And there's ten of them in this tower." (It was bigger than an old vinyl record) And I remember thinking, "Wow. I could put a heck of a lot of games on that."
Click to expand...

SyQuest drives? They were awful.
 
Ian Osborne said:
SyQuest drives? They were awful.
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Agreed!

I'll go you one better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_peripherals#Tape_drives

old school tape drives. Not only did I have one, I was EXCITED to get it. Ah the ignorance of youth. I could have typed in a program faster than waiting for one of these things to load.


We call them flash drives around here, although more often you see people holding up their hand, thumb and first finger spread about two inches apart, asking, "Do you have one of those memory things?"
 
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