Do Solid State Hard Drives have HP-41C/TI-59 Roots?

[Matt Agajanian]

Hello all.

From the way I see it, TI-58/59 Solid State Software Modules sound like the predecessors to Solid State drives in today's laptops. Does the mass storage drives of current laptops have its technology roots in the technologies of software modules from TI-58/59 and HP-41 Series?

[Gene]

I think they are simply a rom much like the roms that run the calculators themselves.

Not erasable, not writeable, just a rom that could be called by the machine.

Not really related to the SSDs in today's machines by any direct link that wouldn't have happened anyway, I suspect.

[Dieter]

(07-22-2017 08:46 PM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  From the way I see it, TI-58/59 Solid State Software Modules sound like the predecessors to Solid State drives in today's laptops. Does the mass storage drives of current laptops have its technology roots in the technologies of software modules from TI-58/59 and HP-41 Series?

I do not think so. First of all, "solid state" was a buzzword in the Sixties and Seventies when transistors and integrated circuits became the standard technology in consumer electronics. But most important, the software modules for the TI58/59 and HP41 contained ROM chips. Their content could be read but not written. Today's SSDs usually are flash memory (read/write), similar to memory cards for cameras and mobile phones, which is a completely different technology.

Dieter

[Matt Agajanian]

(07-22-2017 09:23 PM)Dieter Wrote:  

(07-22-2017 08:46 PM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  From the way I see it, TI-58/59 Solid State Software Modules sound like the predecessors to Solid State drives in today's laptops. Does the mass storage drives of current laptops have its technology roots in the technologies of software modules from TI-58/59 and HP-41 Series?

I do not think so. First of all, "solid state" was a buzzword in the Sixties and Seventies when transistors and integrated circuits became the standard technology in consumer electronics. But most important, the software modules for the TI58/59 and HP41 contained ROM chips. Their content could be read but not written. Today's SSDs usually are flash memory (read/write), similar to memory cards for cameras and mobile phones, which is a completely different technology.

Dieter

Funny you should say Flash. After I posted this, my Palm/Sony flash drive cards came to mind.

But yes, thanks for educating me on how flash memory is much more relavant to drives because of its write functionality rather than read-only.

Thanks again.

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

Even before Flash there was "Solid state" disks that used battery backed SRAM. The later series 80 machines even allowed you to partition off some of the system memory as a RAM disk, but it was volatile.

[Sylvain Cote]

(07-22-2017 08:46 PM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  Does the mass storage drives of current laptops have its technology roots in the technologies of software modules from TI-58/59 and HP-41 Series?

As the other said, the main difference is that today Flash drives are used as disk drives equivalent meaning you need to load the content into RAM in order to use the data or execute the program.
The calculator modules memory was directly mapped to the main address space and you were able to directly execute the program at its mapped address.

For the HP-41, several evolution happened, these modules first came as ROM from HP, then came the 3rd party offering: EPROM (MLDL, ZEPROM, etc) / RAM (HePaX) / Flash (Clonix-41) / NVRAM+Flash (NoV-64)
Technically not a module, the 41CL is a main board replacement with lots of SRAM & Flash in it.

(07-22-2017 09:46 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  Even before Flash there was "Solid state" disks that used battery backed SRAM. The later series 80 machines even allowed you to partition off some of the system memory as a RAM disk, but it was volatile.

The HP-75C/D & HP-71B were natively able to split it's RAM memory between storage and system.

Sylvain

[Dave Britten]

The idea of using silicon (RAM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash, etc.) for non-volatile storage isn't particularly novel, and I doubt modern SSDs owe too much to TI's use of strictly-ROM modules. And I don't believe there were any EEPROM or flash modules for the 41C, right?

I think Psion might have been one of the earliest to use the term "Solid State Disk" to refer to long-term storage in the form of flash:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3...isk-(SSD)/

They also had EPROM datapaks, and a few RAMpaks and Flashpaks for the older Organiser series, but I don't think they ever used the term with that product line.

[Sylvain Cote]

(07-23-2017 08:12 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  And I don't believe there were any EEPROM or flash modules for the 41C, right?

I suggest that you go read the projects section of Diego web site: Diego Clonix-41 & NoVs site and download the comparison chart as well.

Sylvain

[Dave Britten]

(07-23-2017 09:39 PM)Sylvain Cote Wrote:  

(07-23-2017 08:12 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  And I don't believe there were any EEPROM or flash modules for the 41C, right?

I suggest that you go read the projects section of Diego web site: Diego Clonix-41 & NoVs site and download the comparison chart as well.

Sylvain

Well, I should clarify that I mean modules that were contemporary with the 41C, and able to be used as writeable storage directly in the calculator. I'm not aware of any that were available ~30 years ago, though I'm certainly no 41 expert. Those modern flash/EEPROM modules are cool, but clearly not the inspiration for solid state hard drives.

[KeithB]

Nah, bubble memory was the original SSD.

[rprosperi]

(07-24-2017 08:51 PM)KeithB Wrote:  Nah, bubble memory was the original SSD.

...made famous by the Grid Compass...

[Accutron]

The earliest flash drives were developed by an Israeli company called M-Systems. They introduced the first flash memory DIP in 1995, the first USB flash drive in 2000, the first SCSI and IDE SSDs around 2002, and the first SATA SSDs around 2005. Their PC drives were marketed as a Fast Flash Disk (FFD), and introduced many standard features of modern SSDs, including wear-leveling and bad block mapping techniques. M-Systems FFDs were rugged and expensive, and were primarily used by the U.S. military and other customers with hostile operating environments and limitless budgets. M-Systems collaborated with Samsung to develop their FFD products using Samsung-manufactured NAND flash and M-Systems controllers, and they were later acquired by SanDisk. Both SanDisk and Samsung SSDs are directly descended from M-Systems products.

Here's a photo of a first-generation M-Systems 16GB SATA FFD, originally installed in the command interface smart display (Pentium-M / Win XP hardware) of a General Dynamics Land Systems vehicle circa 2008.