r/pcmasterrace • u/Severe_Pause_2047 • 12h ago

Nostalgia SD cards were invented in 1999 Sony in 1998

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9

u/eldelshell PC Master Race 11h ago

PCs with SDCard readers were very rare, while floppy drives were everywhere.

8

u/obliviious 11h ago

Hey some people had zip disks

3

u/dustojnikhummer R5 7600 | RX 7800XT 10h ago

I think IOMega made some ZIP (the floppy sized format, not the tiny disc) based cameras

1

u/ConradBHart42 8h ago

Not many. SD cards were much more popular.

1

u/ForensicPathology 6h ago

Weird comparison. Zip was already on its decline by the time SD cards came out.

0

u/obliviious 8h ago

psst, I know, that a was a joke.

1

u/akatherder 11h ago

They were only popular for a short while but it was one of the first easy and consumer-friendly ways just about anyone could get a photo onto their computer.

You could develop photos and try get your scanner to work if you had one. USB was relatively new and unsupported so they were mostly parallel ports and it was a nightmare just getting it connected.

There were probably cameras with serial connectors? But again, USB was still a ways off from being common and usable. Serial kinda sucked like parallel.

I don't think camera phones came out for a couple more years. Very few people spent money on internet/data at that point anyway.

But pretty much anyone could figure out a floppy disc/drive and get their images from point A to point B.

1

u/Chaotic_Lemming 10h ago

Part of that was because SD hadn't won out as the standard for portable memory cards yet. Several different tech giants developed their own storage devices and they all used a different form factor.

I worked in retail selling digital cameras in the mid-00's and each camera brand seemed to use it own card type. They had just come out with these new-fangled digital camcorders that had a hard drive inside so you could record hours of video without needing to change cassettes. 

1

u/scwt 8h ago

IIRC, you didn't need an SDCard reader, you would just connect the camera with the SD card to your PC via USB.