J. Clarke wrote:

The first time I bought a 1 GB SD card I sat there chuckling at the thing
for about 20 minutes. I remember when several large mainframe shops put
together wouldn't have had that kind of capacity.

My "chuckle moment" was when I attended a vintage computer festival a
couple weeks back and trained my lens on a (still) fully operational IBM
System/3. The whole exhibitiion required multiple phased 30 Amp power
outlets specially setup in the exhibit area, and the system featured two
70MB Hard drive packs... gigantic monstrosities, each with two platters
that were 10 inches in diameter. It was also clear that head crashes
were potentially dangerous, as a service tag was affixed to each pack
where a technician could mark its status: Operational, Refurbished,
Needs Service, or "Unsafe to Operate."

I gleefully took photos of it with my Panasonic FZ-30, of which the OIS
logic alone probably had many times greater processing power than its
subject, all running on 3.3V of battery power and storing to a solid
state postage-stamp sized 1GB SD card. I haven't gotten around to
posting the images; I'll do so this weekend and pass along the link.

Of course in 20 years time, I could be exhibiting this same camera to
some gawking techie who will holographically image it with his
10-terapixel analyzer, running on a 5-year hydrogen fuel cell and
storing to a petabyte neural net.


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