The Small Capacity Memory Card Championship (Japan), in which participants submitted their smallest memory cards, has been a tightly run race, but now the results are in. The smallest memory card found by the retro-computer-loving followers of X68PRO-HD on X was a 0.5MB SmartMedia card. While entrants such as the 1.44MB Flash FDD stick and Casio 2KB battery-backed RAM card didn’t make the cut (they didn’t quite fit the category), we were intrigued to see them.
Without further ado, the full list of tiny-capacity winners was as follows (machine translation):
SD card: 8MB (SD, miniSD, microSD)
MMC card: 4MB
CF card: 2MB
Memory Stick: 4MB
SmartMedia card: 512KB (5V) / 2MB (3.3V)
xD-Picture Card: 16MB
PCMCIA card: 10MB / 2KB (SRAM)
If I were to join in this low-capacity competition, the best entrant from my drawers of detritus would be the 1GB xD-Picture card I found (see top picture). I also remember spending far too much on a 64MB CF card (and PCMCIA adaptor) back when digital cameras were cutting-edge tech objects of desire. Even that, though, seems massive compared to the 0.5MB SmartMedia card found by X68PRO-HD and their social media acquaintances.
The competition poster tipped a hat to other interesting small-capacity flash storage card entrants, but several were disqualified from the final list. Formats like PS1 memory cards, ‘bubble memory,’ USB thumb drives, and battery-backed flash RAM cards didn’t make the grade. Some of these were out of bounds as they weren’t ‘general-purpose’ flash memory cards.
Nevertheless, the rejects pile offered up some very interesting artifacts from earlier computing eras. Probably the most remarkable small-capacity entry that didn’t make it was the Casio 2KB battery-backed RAM card. This was a type of memory card exclusively for the Casio ‘Pokecon’ (ポケコン) range of pocket computers from the 1980s and 90s.
Another entry that didn’t quite make the grade was a 1MB PCMCIA card that was produced before it became a standard – that was a near miss.
Last but not least, it was interesting to see pictures and information about a 1.44MB ‘Flash FDD’ stick. This was a flash drive with the same capacity as a standard HD floppy. Moreover, it was designed with firmware to emulate a real floppy disk and could be booted from, like a floppy, by Windows and Linux users.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
We should do something like this! But instead of who has the smallest capacity memory cards, it's who has the slowest CPU. Maybe lowest score on Cinebench?
The lowest-capacity in my collection are:
MicroSD card/Transflash: 32MB
xD-Picture Card: 16MB
SD card: 8MB
Memory Stick: 4MB
CF card: 2MB
SmartMedia card: 2MB (3.3V) / 1MB (5V)
PCMCIA card: 2 MB flash / 1 MB SRAM
MMC card: 64 KB - This is an odd monkey. It is made for (and came with) a Siemens medical device. I'm pretty sure inside is a higher-capacity chip, firmware-limited to 64 KB, but I'm not willing to rip it open to find out.
The smallest "storage card" I have of any format is a 32 KB SRAM card for my HP 48 calculator. It is roughly the same size as a PCMCIA card, but with "gold fingers" at the end of one long side, like an MMC card; rather than recessed pin sockets like PCMCIA. The "gold fingers" are behind a sliding door to protect them.Although one could argue that my old full-size SIM card with 8 KB of onboard flash storage is the smallest, it wasn't strictly a "storage card", the storage capacity was bonus.
