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To: Petz who wrote (67679)	1/14/2002 8:52:13 AM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 275872

"Is SmartCard the only type of flash memory supported by some of the new motherboards?" No. SmartCards look like credit cards except they have a cluster of gold pads on one end. They have microprocessors embedded in them along with memory. They are used a whole lot more in Europe than in the US, I think they started using them for pay phones. They can be used instead of a credit card, you have electronic cash put on them, and the amount of a purchase gets debited directly from the card. Needless to say, US credit card companies are particularly wild about the concept...

To: Petz who wrote (67679)	1/14/2002 2:44:10 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

John, there is a common terminological uncertainty. There are "SmartCards", and "SmartMedia" _cards_. The "SmartCards" are microprocessors embedded into a credit-card-size plastic. Typically they have 1-16kB Eprom, below 1k RAM, and about 16k ROM to hold secure interface and other cryptography. Intended use is banking, healthcare, pay-TV, Pay-phone, another similar businesses with relatively small amount of information. Europe is leading here, with Visa moving into. E.g. st.com The "SmartMedia" is a mass-storage NAND flash. It has a IDE-ATA compatible interface, and currently comes with 2MB to 128MBytes in capacity. Primary use is in digital cameras and MP3 players as a small portable storage device, competing with Sony Memory Stick and CompactFlash introduced by SunDisk. home.fujifilm.com SmartMedia are down today to $50 for 128MB, while Sony asks 3x of that. Regards, - Ali