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Micro-SD cassettes and records

Reel of Micro-SD storage devices.
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I have in my hand a piece of plastic with two Jupiter Ace programs on it - Missile Man and Space Fighter Pilot if you're interested. It is of course a cassette, containing a reel of magnetic tape. It occurs to me that a Micro-SD card, being 15 mm long, 11 mm wide and one millimetre thick, is of a size which lends itself to being stuck on a strip of slightly wider tape. A reel of tape one millimetre thick with a diameter of five cm and a central wheel 2 cm in diameter would consist of around sixty-five such units, with a total capacity of around a terabyte. Whereas it would be possible just to do this with a strip of cards stuck to a tape, I also imagine that they could be packed in more easily if one forgoes some of the packaging. Alternatively, 800-odd could be placed on a vinyl disc the size of an LP. To read them, er...

OK, to read them, place them edge on and have them kerchunk into a thingy, and in fact, tell you what, just have a disc studded with them arranged edge-on and you get a capacity of around six terabytes minimum single- sided.

nineteenthly, Nov 16 2013

Flexible electronics http://www.nature.c.../full/nmat3759.html
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Nov 16 2013]

gravity-powered tic-tac-toe-playing computers made of tinker toys http://www.retrothi...he_tinkertoy_c.html
As mentioned in an annotation [CraigD, Nov 16 2013]

[link]






       So not actual analogue tapes and LPs, miniaturised to the size of a SD card?
pocmloc, Nov 16 2013
  

       Well, you could go that way too but that's not where I've gone this time.
nineteenthly, Nov 16 2013
  

       Considering recent efforts to develop fully-flexible electronic stuff, the Idea of combining a lot of small flexible segments into an overall "tape" is not far- fetched.
Vernon, Nov 16 2013
  

       Rather than having moving parts, wouldn't it make more sense to have all the microSD cards electrically connected to a controller that would switch between them as needed electronically? Since they usually contain multiple flash memory chips, this is essentially what ordinary *SD card are. as are larger solid state disc drives.   

       This idea is from one POV for a card-switching robot, from another, for a very slow (on the order of 10,000,000 times seek time) SSDD. While robots are fun and cool as amusements in and of themselves, I don't think many folk find very slow storage devices much fun.   

       I put the idea in a category between practical and novelty like gravity-powered tic-tac-toe-playing computers made of tinker toys (a must-see stop on my geek's Boston tour guide) - fun to watch a few times, but not something you'd want to use often.
CraigD, Nov 16 2013
  

       There are advantages to having data storage physically disconnected from the computer, e.g for securing backups from malicious software.
pocmloc, Nov 16 2013
  

       This is Indeed not a terribly practical suggestion, hence its location here rather than in a patent application.
nineteenthly, Nov 16 2013
  

       Any idea is improved by having them kerchunk into a thingy, I'll grant you that.
pertinax, Nov 21 2013
  

       [pertinax], you just made me cry with laughter, probably because I've blancmanged my brain.
nineteenthly, Dec 12 2013
  
      
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