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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : How cheap can SD cards get?

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Geoffg

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Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 3194
Posted: 11:39pm 14 Dec 2012
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I just bought two 4GB micro SD cards for $5 each. It was just a normal retailer and I originally wanted 2GB but they did not have them as that was "too small".

How cheap is that? Soon we could find them in our cornflakes!

One came with a full sized SD card adapter but the other came with a neat USB adapter, slip the micro SD card into the adapter and you can read it on any PC! $5 each!



I can remember when 5 1⁄4-inch floppies cost $5 and they held 360K... mutter, mutter.
Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net
 
OA47

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Joined: 11/04/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 926
Posted: 12:48am 15 Dec 2012
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Geoff, remember the days when we purchased singled sided floppy disks (as they were cheaper) and felt rewarded when with the use of the hole punch could double the capacity?
IRRC the term was "making flippies from floppies"

Ahhh the good old days
 
Geoffg

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Posted: 12:55am 15 Dec 2012
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Yes, and amazingly they were just as good as the "official" double sided floppies.

I should confess, I started on 8 inch single sided single density floppies. A whole 240KB... wow!
Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net
 
OA47

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Joined: 11/04/2012
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Posted: 01:02am 15 Dec 2012
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Yes me too. But I think they were an amazing 180 Kb capacity
 
Geoffg

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Posted: 03:01am 15 Dec 2012
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You might be right, it was a long time ago...
Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net
 
CircuitGizmos

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Joined: 08/09/2011
Location: United States
Posts: 1425
Posted: 04:05am 15 Dec 2012
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When I started binary there weren't any ones. All I got were zeros.
Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite
 
JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
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Posted: 04:31am 15 Dec 2012
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Wow, what fantastic bargains!

Unfortunately I predate floppy disks and can recall being really delighted when such wonderful devices first arrived :(

John
 
MOBI
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Joined: 02/12/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 819
Posted: 11:41am 15 Dec 2012
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I have about 400 5.25 floppies with many games, programming languages and general data that I can no longer access (no disk drive).

My data storage was a modified cassette deck where I fed the data -5 0 +5 direct to the record/play head and then read it back through an op amp/transistor based schmitt trigger to recover the data. All ran at 1200bps, so now I have a box of cassettes that I also can't acces (somewhere along the line the tape recorder got too rusty and worn to use. the processor was a MC6800 running at 1MHz

I started with 512bytes of ram and when the 2102 (1k x 1 bit) came out I had a whopping 1k of ram in only 8 chips! Wrote a small interpreter language that fitted into 256bytes!!

Those were the days my friend ....sigh....

david m.
David M.
 
bigmik

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Joined: 20/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 2914
Posted: 12:28pm 15 Dec 2012
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  Geoffg said   Yes, and amazingly they were just as good as the "official" double sided floppies.

I should confess, I started on 8 inch single sided single density floppies. A whole 240KB... wow!


I admit to being that old too,

My first floppies were 5.25" 68k Single sided 35 track TRS80..

Then I went for 5.25" Double sided, double density, 80 track, which we could bastardise to 85 track and get some massive storage of which I cant remember but around the 1.4Meg using LDOS as the operating system.

I also had 8" on a CPM system and I remember the single sided was about 185kb

Regards,

Mick


EDIT ***

Oh and my first single sided (or maybe double sided) 40 track Floppy drives were MPI brand, bare drives, no case or power supply and cost me $400 each and I only got them that cheap because I bought 4 of them... 40track gave about 80kb

MickEdited by bigmik 2012-12-16
Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<<
 
shoebuckle
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Joined: 21/01/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 189
Posted: 08:07pm 15 Dec 2012
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I too predate floppies by interfacing an audio tape recorder to Jim Rowe's Educ8 computer, with all of 256 bytes of memory!
Hugh
 
James_From_Canb

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Joined: 19/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 265
Posted: 08:38pm 15 Dec 2012
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  MOBI said   I have about 400 5.25 floppies with many games, programming languages and general data that I can no longer access (no disk drive).

david m.


I ended up converting my floppies to images and they all fitted on a single CD. I've never looked at them since, but they're there just in case.

I'd suggest contacting your local computer club to see if they have kept a machine with a functioning 5.25" drive and borrow it for long enough to convert the disks. Then get rid of them.

There's no USB 5.25" drives that I can find with a quick check of Google, although there's an interface that might still be available. You still need the drive of course. An old machine's more convenient as it's ready to go.

James
My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention.

Hedley Lamarr, Blazing Saddles (1974)
 
djuqa

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Joined: 23/11/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 447
Posted: 10:03pm 15 Dec 2012
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I found this USB - FDD adaptor board
Very interesting final line of the description
[quote]High quality immersion gold coated boards produced in cooperation with, and assembled by, Olimex Ltd.[/quote]
I have several old, but good condition PC's. I should rebuild one as FDD - USB - SD transfer machine.
Edited by djuqa 2012-12-17
VK4MU MicroController Units
 
Georgen
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Joined: 13/09/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 462
Posted: 12:08am 16 Dec 2012
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Not SD Card, but USB stick, it is 32GB for $25 at K-Mart now.

George
 
MOBI
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Joined: 02/12/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 819
Posted: 12:53am 16 Dec 2012
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[quote=james]I'd suggest contacting your local computer club to see if they have kept a machine with a functioning 5.25" drive [/quote]

I spent a couple of years trying to get others in my district interested in electronics with not a murmur of interest. I've not much chance in asking a local computer group. That's a problem with country towns.

d.m.
David M.
 
paceman
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Joined: 07/10/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 1329
Posted: 02:42am 19 Dec 2012
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  Geoffg said   I just bought two 4GB micro SD cards for $5 each. It was just a normal retailer and I originally wanted 2GB but they did not have them as that was "too small".
One came with a full sized SD card adapter but the other came with a neat USB adapter, slip the micro SD card into the adapter and you can read it on any PC! $5 each!


Hi Geoff,

Where did you get these from? My notebook (old XP) has a card reader that reads/writes the older 1.6mm thick standard MMC cards (MMC-16M) OK but won't read/write the newer SDHC or micro SD adapters because they're too thick at 2.15mm to fit into the slot. Either of these types are OK in the Maximites but the older ones are not that easy to find now and I'd rather not have another stand-alone reader attached to the notebook. The ones you found with the USB connector sounds just the ticket.

Greg

 
Geoffg

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Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 3194
Posted: 03:52am 19 Dec 2012
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They came from a Perth computer shop called PLE Computers.
Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net
 
OA47

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Joined: 11/04/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 926
Posted: 07:56pm 27 Dec 2012
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Speaking of old magnetic media. I still have some cassettes with basic programs on them written IIRC at 1200 baud. Does any one have any ideas about using the mite to read this data via a tape deck and the audio port?
 
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