The Small Capacity Memory Card Championship (Japan) results are in — a 0.5MB SmartMedia card won, but a 2KB Casio battery-backed RAM card lost due to a technicality

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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