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5GB Hard Disk On A PCMCIA Type II Card
chopkins1 writes: "Toshiba has managed to squeeze 5GB of storage space into a PCMCIA Type II SAN disk. I'll take this over a Sony Memory Stick any day. Faster storage and faster copy to and from a computer. Considering that I'm about to get a camcorder that supports both, I think my decision is made (128M Memory Stick for $240US or Toshiba 5G for $400US), I'm going for the Type II card." As the article points out, that's more than typical DVD.
Consider real time video capture. This is NOT repeated writes/rewrites of the same data but a continuous filling of the disk. A big cache provides some buffer space while other parts of the cache are being flushed out to disk, meaning the drive continuously accepts data rather than pasuing constantly (as with a small cache) to write chunks of data.
excuse me,
but we're talking 5GB Microdrive which goes into your PCMCIA type II slot - you can have 3-4 hours of "movies" (call it what you want - but you have 320x240 resolution without anti aliasing etc...) - so they can be compressed quite easily with any codec... and that includes stereo sound..
Of course - the power required to operate those kind of driver continuosly will "milk" you battery right away - but thats another point..
Hetz (Heunique)
- A.P.
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"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
As other posters have pointed out, the figure is closer to 750. What they haven't pointed out is that this is giga *BITS* not giga *BYTES*. So, at the maximum density, you're talking 750/8, or less than 100 gigabytes, which seems a lot more resonable
Just food for thought before you pitch a few on the old AmEx.
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Everyone seems to be talking about how nice one of these would fit in his iPAQ/Palm/whatever. The truth is, unfortunately, that harddrives sucks battery life really fast from handhelds, which makes them in reality unuseable. I tried an iPAQ with an IBM microdrive, and playing MP3s from it emptied a fully charged battery in about 10 minutes.
I hope you don't think the card slot on your camcorder is for recording video. Unless you're getting a new camcorder Sony hasn't announced yet, those Memory Stick and PC Card slots are both for storing still images. Lousy, low-res ones.
Even the $2500 Sony camcorders max out at 640x480 for stills, which look nice on a computer screen or a TV, but they won't make for anything bigger than a so-so 3"x5" print640x480 digital still cameas sell for $70 these days. And on a 128MB card or Memory Stick, you can fit about 1300 images at that resolution. Isn't that enough?
There are camcorders now out there that can do 1280x960 still images, but I don't think Sony makes one, and in any case, that's still bottom-of-the-line by digital still-camera standards these days. Remember: digital video cameras are terrible still cameras, and digital still cameras are terrible video cameras.
If you could dump video to the PC Card slot in the camcorder the 5GB drive would be nice for that. But you can't.
On the other hand, if you have one of those new Nikon D-1x or Kodak 760 3000x2000 resolution still cameras ($4000 or $7000, respectively, without a lens, flash or AC adaptor), something like this is good indeed, since the raw, lossless images take up about 18MB each. A 5GB card would hold a couple hundred such images, or a couple thousand minimal-loss JPEGs. That's pretty nice. A 5GB device would even be good for the "3 megapixel" 2000x1500 class of cameras, with plenty of room for a month or more of heavy shooting. But for the 640x480 images camcorders put out?
Caching in any computer system implies attempted reuse, of which there is none in such a system.
Without reuse, all you're doing is changing the maximum queue length in a G/G/1/L/M queuing system (remember those from your intro to queuing theory class that should be mandatory for any sort of technical media major?); it improves burst tolerance, but doesn't increase steady state throughput one bit.
Repeat after me: caching is not a panacea.
It's an actual hard drive crammed into the card, just like their previous 2 gig Type II PCMCIA card, or the IBM CF MicroDrive.
This is a Type II PCMCIA card, and the PDA had a Type II CF slot. There are converters, but as it stands, the iPaq with PCMCIA sleeve is one of the few PDAs that can use this card.
I've been holding out on buying a hand held unit until I would be able to bring some pr0n with me on the road.
Thanks Toshiba!
:)Trolling is a art,
In my Newton! :)
Just raise the taxes on crack.
I can't figure out why Toshiba is bothering with Type II PCMCIA. A 5GB Type II CF card would be very cool, and would have some serious utility, but there just aren't that many devices that have full-size PC-Card slots that need removable online storage like this.
(I remember drives the size of washing machines... now something the size of a credit-card is considered "full-size.")
-Zandr
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
Lossy compression is not an option? Not even high-quality jpeg? (Just wondering if you've tried, and if you could elaborate on the details.. I'm curious). I find it very diffult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between some decent jpeg compression and a lossless image, especially at 1600x1200.
Okay... first, which sony flash video recorder are you referring to? Any Sony video camera I've seen uses tape. Yes, some have a memstick slot; it's used for taking stills with the video camera, or taking low-res low-rate video snapshots. Same goes for the still cameras that do video; the video is not meant to be high quality; it's for little 30 second, low-rate snapshots.
Now, is memstick expensive? Yes. Is that because its' proprietary? Yes. Does it have a technical advantge over CF or SM? No.
But you see, I bought a Sony Cybershot... and I bought a couple memsticks. Sure, CF would have been cheaper, by quite a bit. But that's all I need. There is no recurring cost for me, either way. It's not like I need some piece of flash, at this time, that fits in everythin I own; it's for storing pictures on. I don't go around buying more flash all the time, so I don't really care if it's more expensive.
On the topic of mp3 cd players.. I have an exonion.... avoid it at all costs. The mp3 playback quality STINKS. I don't know what's up.. but it beats the crap out of my tunes. Low-end filters, bass is missing (and I know it's there; this is on tracks that sound fantastic with winamp or whatever else I use on the computer). CD playback is okay, but it still pauses between tracks, which sucks.
Be very wary of which mp3 player you get.. many have shitty decoders.
My advice? Get an MD player...
Go get a HandEra 330 and you're ready to rock. Compact Flash, Secure Digital/MMC, and a bad-ass high-res screen. It is THE monochrome PalmOS device.
http://www.handera.com
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The the Genio that was just mentioned...
Beats the HELL out of my Palm III...
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
its not a CPRM device. its an ATA66./ 5002mplspec.shtml
see the specs here : http://www.toshiba.com/taecdpd/techdocs/MK5002mpl
its also got a 3sec spin up time and consumes 1.5 W average power -- thats a bit hefty.
1) It seems a fall onto carpet from a desk would be a lot less than 3400Gs, esp as the microdrive is light, so the carpet will be "springy".
2) It's all cubes vs squares: the mass of the moving parts, and hence the force they exert under accelleration, varies with the cube of the size, while the cross section of the parts, and hence their rigidity, varies with the square. So every halving in feature size doubles the Gs it can withstand.
When you realize that this applies to the head going back and forth over the platter, it explains why drives got smaller (physically) before they got larger (capacity): smaller drives have better reliability.
You appear to have calculated: 1.8*pi*150 ~=848.
Would the following be more accurate?
0.9*0.9*pi*150*2 ~=763
(area of a circle is pi*r^2, and both sides of the platter are in use)
Yes, except that shock resistance decreases and power usage increases with density, which means that 848GByte disk would need to be shock isolated better than a high-end turntable, and need full-time AC power... which sort of defeats the purpose of it being PCMCIA, doesn't it? Also, what's the bandwidth of the PCMCIA slot? Doesn't it take about 10 DAYS to transfer 848GBytes of data through the PCMCIA bus?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Every few months a new innovation in storage technology comes out and it seems to me that copyright infringment is getting easier every 6 months. Within a year or two, recordable dvd technology will probably be standardized (probably around DVD-R) and that will raise major issues for the copyright cartels and their congresscritters.
I remember seeing something to the effect that the global music industry is worth around $15B USD, but the American software industry alone is worth around $170B USD. Then you get into the American computer hardware industry's value to our economy and that will force those such as my congressman, Bob Goodlatte, into choosing to either deep 6 the American advantage over most of the world in the computer industry or to tell the copyright cartels to take a hike. Say what you will about the copy protection systems that the software industry uses, but at least it uses technology to solve its problem a hell of a lot more often than it uses government compared to the other copyright industries.
I think the overall intellectual property rights debate shows the difference between those that want an essentially truly free market and those that want a relatively free market, but always protect minor industries. I want much less protection for IP, not because I believe that bootlegging is right, but because IP law impedes progress when it is very strong and throws a monkey wrench into the free market. For example, ow many innovators have either been driven out of business by patent law, or just threw up their hands and quit because of the laws? We'll never know, just as we'll never know just how many kids we could have saved from drugs by dealing with drugs the way we deal with alcohol and tobacco products.
It is only innevitable that someone will make a dvd player for the average joe's home entertainment system that can play fully encrypted DVDs from a DVD-R. Some company like APEX will realize that the market for such a product could be astronomical if built up correctly. That is when we as Americans will have to decide between market capitalism and market socialism. If our courts protect APEX and either strike down the DMCA or limit it then that is a strong vote for capitalism. If not... then well it is time to stop bullshitting ourselves about being the "land of the free."
This would be so cool for laptops like the Sony PictureBook.
Of course, that would involve using DeCSS, so the MPAA wouldn't like it. With the DMCA, it would probably be illegal in the United States (although it sounds like "Fair Use" to me).
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Join my fight against Subway's new cut!
WTF. Even the old cut, let's think about this for a second.
2 quick slices and you end up with 2 peices of bread, the main part and the secondary part.
The OH SO CRUEL laws of physic say that both parts are more or less the same as the whole. (without compression of course)
So the only way to get a "lot" of topings is to have both the "food" and the bread HIGHLY compressed. This depends solely on the process and proccesie building your sandwinch!
What NEEDS to be implented is a computer controlled compression robot that the proccesie can insert both topings and the secondary part in to receive MAXIUM compression and to also insure a prefect fit.
I haven't eaten at subway for a while, but plan to this weekend. Do you have any techinal document that I could take with me to the sandwinch shop to back up the "cheap" cut claim you so proudly disrespect on your web site?
I can hold my own in a debate of techinal nature, but having techinal document would help my case.
Maybe you would like to join me this weekend for a sandwich to provide "back up support" incase the processie is under some form of mind control by the sandwich shop? We may need to de-program the processie, are you ready for this? I got a van, 25 hits of LSD and a sensory depervantion chamber.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I would like to slap one of these into an portable mp3, why not? Ever look at some of the memory chips used for these devices? Roughly the same size. Sure you couldn't take the mp3 player sky diving, but it would be good enough to jog to the store and back.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I have a Casio digital camera and use a 340 Meg IBM Microdrive in it, and its great to have that kind of capacity. The problem has been reliability - I've already had to have it replaced under warranty once after only a few months of use under gentle conditions.
:-)
The article talks about carrying these new drives around "in a shirt pocket," but I'd like to see some data on reliability before spending too much money on one.
Having said that, I still want one
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Didn't IBM patent the concept of large hard drive space in small packages?
Toshiba is in deep shite now!
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
"This is where god would go if he wanted to get off blow!"
Family Guy rules. IMHO, atleast on par with the Simpsons (and probably better). Who can resist a coke-sniffing dog and a guy in a wheelchair chasing down drug dealers?
By the way, in that episode your sig is from, did you notice the room Brian had at the rehab place? Room number 42. Hmm.....
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#nohup cat
Can this type II card be used as a boot device? It would make for some interesting OS swapping, while being able to keep the main filesystem mountable by most... err well 5GB I guess you dont really need the laptops internal HD for a filesystem do ya...
"This is where god would go if he wanted to get off blow!"
UNLESS it has CPRM, in which case I will forget all about this. So which is it, Toshiba? Do you want to succeed or fail?
sulli
RTFJ.
I have a few thoughts on the Memory Stick, especially the MagicGate "technology"...
http://treklink.net/~overcode/copy-rant.txt
-John
That's more storage than my first laptop computer had and still plenty of storage to run Linux (even WinMe instead of WinCE) in a handheld device.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
OH DUH yes you're right ! Oh well, /me go back to school :)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
According to an article reported by Slashdot recently, the limit in storage density on a magnetic medium is 150Gb/in2. So with a 1.8in disk, this little PCMCIA hard-disk could contain a whopping 848Gb a few years from now !
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Ack! The horror!
is putting a PCMCIA slot on your desktop to make 5G of data easily portable to your laptop.
Evil is the money of root.
http://www.dynabook.com/pc/catalog/shuhen/mhdd/mhd 005.htm
Or see babel translated page.
Correct, but all that will go on theses drives will come from CDs/DVDs in the first place...
I won't ever use a RAID0 for my main disk. RAID1 (mirroring) is the way to go in this case, fast and secure (and yes twice as expansive).
Nobox: Only simple products.
Could be pretty cool for still images, digital cameras? But once it's full that's a lot of images to delete. (Unless ofcourse it's only got 10 really high quality images on it....)
It's pretty neat all the same, wonder when the 60G version is coming out.....
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M0571y H@rml355.
So why does the article indicate that it has a platter? If this is the case, can it take the shock of use while riding on a bus?
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Carl G. Jung
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Carl G. Jung
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"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
Now this is an intersting development and worth a look, my only questions (which the article doesnt mention) are simple.
How hot does it run (PC Card slots are notoriously cooling innefficient ?
How Noisy (maybe silent but worth asking) ?
How Reliable (MTBF Rating or similar) ?
How Robust (Shockproof) ?
What drivers are required (if the device is driver independant or self installing on Win then that makes it an ideal presentation storage device, simply plug in an off you go)?
I cant seem to find this info around the web - then again maybe im blind so if someone finds it can they post it ? this is the sort of info i would use before making a purchase - and this device is something i would use and at a low enought cost (us$400 UNIT is AU$800 (rough) but thats launch and for around AU400-500 this would serve a usefull purpose for road warriors).
COol piece of tech really - cant wait to see one
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....