![]() The manual ( still available from ASUS) confirmed my suspicion. I’ve recently rescued an old Pentium 4 PC built around the P4B motherboard, and while performing a visual inspection to make sure no capacitors are blown, I found two headers labeled “SD” and “MS” and immediately thought: did they build some kind of proprietary card reader hardware onto the board? Seasoned PC builders will know internal SD card readers usually connect over USB 2.0 through a front panel USB header, but this system only supports the not-so-great USB 1.1. Meanwhile, ASUS was probably looking for gimmicks to put on their motherboards for the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP, so they decided to build SD and Memory Stick card readers into these boards, as well as a talking BIOS. This led to a format war, where the Secure Digital and (to a lesser extent) Memory Stick formats prevailed in the consumer space. ![]() These gadgets helped fuel the market for memory cards: little flash-based devices which store an astonishing amount of data for their size, increasing every year – some people still can’t get over the fact you can store half a terabyte of data in a fingernail-sized card. Digital cameras, audio players (especially after the introduction of the iPod), PDAs and other then-high-tech consumer electronics are on the rise. ![]()
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