Memory Sticks

[Blue Mountain]

Sun and IBM are going to be devastated to learn this. They're gonna have to quit calling their archival storage systems "tape drives". Maybe they could call 'em "tape thingies". Although that sounds a bit tacky for a $30,000 gadget.

Doh! And I've used many a tape drive in my time!

The word "drive" probably came into use in the sense of a mechanism used to hold and operate ("drive") the storage medium. For tape, you need something to hold the tape and spin the reels to provide the motion of the tape across the read/write head. For rotating discs, you also need something to hold the disc and spin it, and another mechanism to move the read/write heads over the patter.

For flash drives ... hmmm. Nothing moves aside from the electrons. How about "USB flash mass storage device", or "USBFMSD". Kinda like PCMCIA, but longer.

(PCMCIA: "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms".)

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

Kinda like PCMCIA, but longer.

(PCMCIA: "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms".)

I settled for "PC card" with those things. The rest was too much trouble to say, even if the people you were talking to had a clue what you meant.

ETA: Make that "PC card ... thingie" .

 

[Uncle Otto]

I have an Ativa flash drive. I can put any size SD card into it I want. I always had the impression that a memory stick has a fixed amount of data it can hold, rather than the removable type. I use it primarily to transfer photos from my Canon digital camera to my iMac. The camera takes any size card you want to use.

And bloody hell-----my first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 with the tape cassette drive. I traded my youngest BIL for it with a 35mm Argus STL 1000 camera------he got the better end of the deal by far.