History (1994): 1.3-Inch Sundisk Flash Card To Replace HP Kittyhawk

SunDisk (Santa Clara, CA) barely waited until HP announced it was ceasing production of its Kittyhawk, a 1.3-inch HDD, before introducing its first flash card drives in the same small form factor.

The 1.3- inch units, called IDE FlashDrive are available in 4, 10, 20, 40 and 60MB capacities (doubled with Stacker compression option).

High volume OEM prices range between $240 for the 4MB unit, and $1,600 for the 60MB model.

Leon Malmed, VP WW sales and marketing, said: “Our new 1.3-inch FlashDrive is fully compatible with the 1.3-inch Kitttyhawk rotating disk drive that HP recently discontinued.“

It’s the world’s smallest external storage device, weighing 1.3 ounces, measuring 1.5 inches long, 2 inches wide, and .4 inch thick.

The IDE unit can be plugged into the same connector sockets used for 1.8- and 2.5-inch devices.

SunDisk also said its complete line of ATA PC cards are compatible with Apple’s new PCMCIA expansion module for PowerBook 500 series notebook computers. This module is an user-installable, wallet-size case that fits into 1 of the 2 battery bays of the notebook.

This article is an abstract of news published o the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 81, published on October 1994.