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Who invented the thumb drive?

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Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#121

Post by hakfoo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
knicholes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D Printers

That's one application that never made sense to me. It's like an idea to use SD cards with paper printers - you'd want to connect directly with a cable, or hook it up to LAN/WLAN, on the first available opportunity. I get that 10 years ago, back when I was in this space, this was a consequence of DIY builds being Arduino-based - SD cards were the easiest form of durable storage to work with, and the alternative was s…

I think people don't want the printer in the same room as their computer. If it's noisy or you have the smell of melting filament, that's not a pleasant experience.

Network-attached might work, but that probably complicates the device UI substantially-- some way to bind it to a WLAN, possibly even set up non-DHCP network configuration.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#122

Post by cptskippy »

> The Iomega Zip Drive, called a “superfloppy” drive and introduced in 1994, could store up to 750 MB of data and was writable, but it never gained widespread popularity, partly due to competition from cheaper and higher-capacity hard drives.

I've heard or read a few stories about the Zip Drive recently and they all seem to compress the 10ish years of existence and completely downplay it's impact or significance.

In 1994 a 1 GB SCSI drive cost over $1000 the largest IDE drives were about 250 MB, new PCs were shipping with 130 MB drives and 486 CPUs. If you need more than 1.44 MB of removable storage you chose between a tape backup and the rarer more expensive Bernolli drives; both requiring a SCSI interface. Tape drives were relatively inexpensive, slow and didn't do random access; reading or wring everything serially and it took hours to restore files. Bernolli drives were expensive and unreliable; the fail state was a damaged drive head.

I remember having an Irwin 40 MB tape drive that I used to backup games from my 100 MB Western Digital HDD. While tape was slow, it was still faster than installing Wing Commander or Papyrus Nascar Racing from 2 dozen floppy disks. It was also unattended unlike floppy.

When the Zip Drive arrived in 1994 it offered 100 MB of external storage in similar capacities to comparably priced tape drives for similar prices. It was random access like a floppy disk and you could read off of it rather than having to copy the files to your HDD like with Tape. It was also much faster and the parallel port version could be hot swapped without rebooting.

CD-Rs wouldn't be a thing for a couple years, they wouldn't be affordable for a couple more, and they wouldn't be reliable for a couple more. Initial drives didn't come with buffers and needed high performance machines, later buffered drives could still underflow if your PC couldn't keep the buffer filled. Burning disks was a ceremony where you carefully shutdown anything running and defragged your HDD to ensure nothing would interrupt the burning process. Everyone had a spindle of failed burns. Even when CD-Rs and CD-RWs finally arrived, they were slow. The ZIP drive was comparable to an 8x CD-ROM and those speeds for R/RW were still years away.

For a 6 year period after the initial 100 MB drive launched, the Zip drive was a big deal. I don't know what their definition of "widespread popularity" was but Iomega was huge for a time and quietly died off in the early 2000s.

When Iomega launched the Zip 250 in 1999, ZDNet wrote [0]:

> "...Iomega is poised to expand its already massive share of the removable storage market."

> "The biggest name in removable storage just got bigger thanks to the Zip drive's increased capacity--it now holds a generous 250MB of data."

The 750 MB version wouldn't arrive until 2002 as a last dying gasp from Iomega in an attempt to compete with CD-R/RW.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20001119014500/http://www8.zdnet...

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#123

Post by hakfoo »

amelius wrote: post #5

Someone not smart enough to understand that most people want to write on it with a pen, so it should contain a large flat, bright-colored surface.

Underrated point here. Floppies at least usually came with sticky labels so you could tell them apart.

With flash drives, If you're lucky, you get a colour assortment in the box.

I bought a packet of 5x16Gb drives, and I can't tell which ones are the "partitioned strange for use with a vintage machine" versus "my brother's backups".

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#124

Post by kccqzy »

Mistletoe wrote: post #115
narag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, for me it helps replacing another device that I canned twenty years ago: the printer. Every time I need to print something to feed some troglodite's requirement, I put a pdf in a pincho and go down the street to the call shop. 20 cents is absurdly expensive, but much less than maintaining a printer for one paper sheet a month at most.

I love my laser printer. There’s something about looking at data on paper that I really enjoy. Store it in a binder to look at later. Hang it on the wall to think about. I look at screens enough already. I don’t mindlessly print stuff off but important stuff like soil tests etc. I’d rather have a physical copy than go search for it electronically.

And not to mention, with some printers, you can feel the letters on paper as if there's some embossment. It gives a more tactile feel to the work you produced.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#125

Post by ghaff »

cedilla wrote: post #119
myself248 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98SE still needed driver installation for every stick. It was WinME that included the first mass-storage generic class drivers. These were then backported to 98SE, and pretty much every vintagecomputing enthusiast with a 98 box is running this despite the anachronism, because authenticity is just such a massive PITA. https://vetusware.com/download/Universal%20USB%20Mass%20Stor... In case you're in the market for such…

So, did usb sticks come with floppy disks or CDs with a driver?

I think it may have been a mix. There was also a mini CD thing around that time that sometimes got used for drivers. In general, things were switching over to CDs in the late 90s but as I recall floppies were still around for some purposes.

ADDED: And as someone else mentioned, you sometimes downloaded drivers. Not everyone had broadband but Internet access was pretty common by then.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#126

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14
mk_stjames wrote: post #8

I can tell I'm getting older by the number of articles I read that take time to describe 'history' of things that seem obvious since I lived through them, like the explanation of how 3.5" high density 'Floppy disks' held up to 1.44MB. Like... "I know... oh god some people don't know that."

I mean to add, the article says that thumb drives are still hot and the market will grow by billions a year more in a few years, but... I haven't used a thumb drive in years. The only time I actually went to look for one was to plug it into a shitty digital picture frame, and that one would also accept SD cards.

I have one on my keychain I can use in a pinch to move files somewhere. It's come in handy a few times, but generally I prefer sending a link or such.

But elsewhere in the world thumb drives are a very big deal. Like down in Mexico most car stereos will play MP3s directly off a thumb drive. So I learned you give the guy that runs the local internet cafe a few bucks, tell them what kind of music you like, and they fill it up with whatever. Likewise you can get loaded up with tv shows, movies, etc. This is a big deal for people in the very poor countryside.

That was just my experience in Mexico a decade ago, I imagine it's similar a lot of other places in the world.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#127

Post by ghaff »

Mistletoe wrote: post #115
narag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, for me it helps replacing another device that I canned twenty years ago: the printer. Every time I need to print something to feed some troglodite's requirement, I put a pdf in a pincho and go down the street to the call shop. 20 cents is absurdly expensive, but much less than maintaining a printer for one paper sheet a month at most.

I love my laser printer. There’s something about looking at data on paper that I really enjoy. Store it in a binder to look at later. Hang it on the wall to think about. I look at screens enough already. I don’t mindlessly print stuff off but important stuff like soil tests etc. I’d rather have a physical copy than go search for it electronically.

Yeah. I'm not a particularly heavy user of paper but I sometimes print something out to refer to it on a call, print out a recipe, print out a map, etc. Paper is just easier sometimes and I couldn't imagine taking the 30 minutes it would take me to go to the nearest Staples to get something printed out. And laser printers don't dry out like inkjets.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#128

Post by giantrobot »

cedilla wrote: post #119
myself248 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98SE still needed driver installation for every stick. It was WinME that included the first mass-storage generic class drivers. These were then backported to 98SE, and pretty much every vintagecomputing enthusiast with a 98 box is running this despite the anachronism, because authenticity is just such a massive PITA. https://vetusware.com/download/Universal%20USB%20Mass%20Stor... In case you're in the market for such…

So, did usb sticks come with floppy disks or CDs with a driver?

Sometimes. I recall early thumb drives didn't come in the small blister packs you see by cash registers today. If they didn't come with a CD (or miniCD) you had to go the the manufacturer's site and download the drivers.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#129

Post by allenu »

Mistletoe wrote: post #115
narag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, for me it helps replacing another device that I canned twenty years ago: the printer. Every time I need to print something to feed some troglodite's requirement, I put a pdf in a pincho and go down the street to the call shop. 20 cents is absurdly expensive, but much less than maintaining a printer for one paper sheet a month at most.

I love my laser printer. There’s something about looking at data on paper that I really enjoy. Store it in a binder to look at later. Hang it on the wall to think about. I look at screens enough already. I don’t mindlessly print stuff off but important stuff like soil tests etc. I’d rather have a physical copy than go search for it electronically.

I bought a printer about a year ago and I use it all the time. There is definitely something nice and convenient about having a physical copy that you carry with you.

I needed some info when I was playing a video game, so I looked it up and printed out the excerpt that I needed. I could have just loaded it on my phone, but then I'd have find the page again whenever I needed it, and try to avoid all the stupid ads.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#130

Post by brnt »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14
mk_stjames wrote: post #8

I can tell I'm getting older by the number of articles I read that take time to describe 'history' of things that seem obvious since I lived through them, like the explanation of how 3.5" high density 'Floppy disks' held up to 1.44MB. Like... "I know... oh god some people don't know that."

I mean to add, the article says that thumb drives are still hot and the market will grow by billions a year more in a few years, but... I haven't used a thumb drive in years. The only time I actually went to look for one was to plug it into a shitty digital picture frame, and that one would also accept SD cards.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a man with a USB drive hurtling down the stairs.
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