Smartmedia Card Spec Opened, available free (2000)

I really like SmartMedia cards. They aren't really practical anymore, but they look cool. The small sizes kinda allow it to be used as a kind of solid state floppy, where you really only store one thing on it

Pdf of Smartmedia Card spec.

https://affon.narod.ru/CARDS/elec10ei.pdf

Because 5v Smartmedia cards are rare and I have a Roland MC505 that can use them, I am wondering if it is possible to create a hardware emulator using an Arduino.

My first digital camera used Smartmedia. I had a 32MB card, if memory serves. I could pull pictures off via a serial interface, which was slow and required a proprietary app, or via a FlashPath[0] adapter. Sadly, FlashPath adapters require a driver and aren't actually emulating a floppy diskette. Putting the reader into a floppy diskette shell and using the disk interface to transfer data is still a pretty cool hack, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath

This makes me realize I haven't had to mess with a Memory Stick in many years. Ye gods, I'm glad the younguns never had to deal with Sony's obsession with proprietary tech. They made the loveliest hardware, hamstrung with single-source accessories that cost many times more than the standard version but were only just a little better, if at all.

Today you can more or less buy an SD card and stick it in something and have it work. I am glad we eventually won this war.

Ah, the 2000's, when CompactFlash cards weren't that compact, and SmartMedia wasn't at all smart.

Before anyone asks, it was cell phones going stratospheric in popularity, with T-flash (sdcard) storage that won the flash format war (excusing USB obviously). Everything else was left to rot.