Flash Card Read by Floppy Disk Drive!

Following collaborative developments with Fisher International, Toshiba displayed an unusual device: an adaptor in the shape of a floppy disk cartridge in which it is possible to insert one of Toshiba’s SSFDC flash cards.

Once loaded, the adaptor slides into any 3.5-inch drive slot. Thus, the data stored on a tiny flash card, images from a digital camera, for instance, can be read easily by a PC without a PCMCIA drive.

The adaptor should be available next year at a price yet to be determined.

No technical specs were furnished, but it is likely that this adaptor will comprise an SSFDC connection slot and a small controller card that will permit data transit from the flash chip via a small flexible magnetic bit, which in turn is read by the magnetic drive head.

Fisher International had already released a similar product that adapted smart cards for a diskette drive.

The 2MB Toshiba SSFDC card sells for $20 in high volume OEM.

The capacity should double in the course of the next year, and double again before the end of 1997.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 107, published on December 1996.