SmartMedia Memory Card

SmartMedia Memory Cards

"A Small But Powerful Memory Card"

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SanDisk's SmartMedia is a memory card designed to address the need for a compact and reliable storage medium for emerging portable and handheld applications. It's designed to
provide additional memory through maximum performance for your digital camera and digital music
player. SmartMedia can be used in conjunction with a PC Card Adapter for use with PCMCIA slots. FlashPath, a 3.5-inch floppy disk adapter is also available to provide a seamless interface to desktop PCs. This makes data transfer approximately ten times faster than using a serial port.

SmartMedia cards combine small size with simple architecture, consisting of a single NAND flash electrically erasable programmable read only memory chip embedded in a thin plastic card measuring one third the size of a standard credit card. This simple design offers the most cost-effective small form factor memory device available. NAND flash memory provides fast write and erase functions plus high-speed read with minimal power consumption.

SanDisk is a leading supplier of flash data storage products in consumer, OEM and industrial markets. Since its inception, the company has focused on providing customers with reliable, high performance flash memory products. SanDisk's product line includes: CompactFlash, MultiMediaCard, SmartMedia , Secure Digital (SD) Card, PC Card, PC Card Adapter, FlashDrive, ImageMate and SecureMate card reader.

See the Sandisk site for information on other cameras and products: http://www.sandisk.com/main.htm

Beginning, Intermediate camera users. Very easy to use for just about anyone.

Image Storage: We use the SmartMedia stamp-sized memory cards with the our Olympus D-400 Zoom Digital Camera. The camera came with an 8 MB card, but also takes a 16 MB card. A FlashPath floppy-disk adapter came free with the camera. With this FlashPath floppy-disk adapter you can copy files from the SmartMedia card into your computer. The SmartMedia card slips into a slot in the side of the FlashPath adapter, which is the same size and shape as a floppy disk. Then after installing the appropriate driver software, you just put the FlashPath into your floppy disk drive like any other floppy disk and copy away. This is a very easy way to transfer data and worked faster than I would have thought. The number of images that can be stored on each SmartMedia card will vary depending on the combination of image size and compression level that you select. With this camera, you can save the images as standard JPEG files at two different image sizes (1280 x 960 and 640 x 480), and three different compression settings (uncompressed, low, and high). Average file sizes range from 3.6 megabytes for the uncompressed format, to about 450K for SHQ, 225K for HQ, and 65K for SQ. For storage on the memory cards, you get from 2, 18, 36, and 122 images per 8 meg card depending on the file format. This is an excellent storage device.

SmartMedia Memory Cards "A Small But Powerful Memory Card"
Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it. Use your browser's "BACK" button to return to this review when done.


SanDisk's SmartMedia is a memory card designed to address the need for a compact and reliable storage medium for emerging portable and handheld applications. It's designed to provide additional memory through maximum performance for your digital camera and digital music player. SmartMedia can be used in conjunction with a PC Card Adapter for use with PCMCIA slots. FlashPath, a 3.5-inch floppy disk adapter is also available to provide a seamless interface to desktop PCs. This makes data transfer approximately ten times faster than using a serial port. SmartMedia cards combine small size with simple architecture, consisting of a single NAND flash electrically erasable programmable read only memory chip embedded in a thin plastic card measuring one third the size of a standard credit card. This simple design offers the most cost-effective small form factor memory device available. NAND flash memory provides fast write and erase functions plus high-speed read with minimal power consumption. SanDisk is a leading supplier of flash data storage products in consumer, OEM and industrial markets. Since its inception, the company has focused on providing customers with reliable, high performance flash memory products. SanDisk's product line includes: CompactFlash, MultiMediaCard, SmartMedia , Secure Digital (SD) Card, PC Card, PC Card Adapter, FlashDrive, ImageMate and SecureMate card reader. See the Sandisk site for information on other cameras and products: http://www.sandisk.com/main.htm


Beginning, Intermediate camera users. Very easy to use for just about anyone.


Image Storage: We use the SmartMedia stamp-sized memory cards with the our Olympus D-400 Zoom Digital Camera. The camera came with an 8 MB card, but also takes a 16 MB card. A FlashPath floppy-disk adapter came free with the camera. With this FlashPath floppy-disk adapter you can copy files from the SmartMedia card into your computer. The SmartMedia card slips into a slot in the side of the FlashPath adapter, which is the same size and shape as a floppy disk. Then after installing the appropriate driver software, you just put the FlashPath into your floppy disk drive like any other floppy disk and copy away. This is a very easy way to transfer data and worked faster than I would have thought. The number of images that can be stored on each SmartMedia card will vary depending on the combination of image size and compression level that you select. With this camera, you can save the images as standard JPEG files at two different image sizes (1280 x 960 and 640 x 480), and three different compression settings (uncompressed, low, and high). Average file sizes range from 3.6 megabytes for the uncompressed format, to about 450K for SHQ, 225K for HQ, and 65K for SQ. For storage on the memory cards, you get from 2, 18, 36, and 122 images per 8 meg card depending on the file format. This is an excellent storage device.