History (1996): 140MB Flash Card From SanDisk

SanDisk introduced a 1.8-inch IDE 140MB flash card, the SDIB-140.

“Our highest capacity flash drive had been an 80MB device, but our customers often requested a higher capacity product because they needed more storage for their growing applications,” said Jeff Ellerbruch, product manager.

The company said that the new card is the industry’s highest capacity embedded flash storage device.

It’s worth recalling nevertheless that the same California firm launched a 175MB flash card at the beginning of 1995, although in the PCMCIA III format.

The firm first announced a 40MB card at the beginning of 1993.

The new 140MB device will begin production in 4Q96 at a high volume OEM price of $2,075, nearly as expensive as the notebook computer that houses it. This price boils down to $14.8/MB, much greater than that for HDDs, although SanDisk points out that its card uses less than 10% of the power required to operate rotating memory. 1.8-inch HDDs and can withstand at least 5x more shock and vibration.

It was 2 years ago that SanDisk, then known as SunDisk, announced its plan to offer a 500MB card by 1997, in collaboration with NEC.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 105, published on October 1996.