derSammlerEver heard of a #LaserCard? Probably not. But what if I tell you that this was the first-ever optical storage medium that allowed the user to write data to it? Way before PD and CD-R. And you would be even more stunned to learn that it did exist in mid-1984 already - before even the first CD-ROM drive.
The format was developed by DREXON and later continued by LaserCard Systems. Storage capacity was between 2.8 and 4.1 MiB (with/without EDAC).
The first two pictures show a LaserCard from my collection. These were samples given out at SYSTEMS '91. Last picture is from Computer Chronicles (May 1984) with Stewart Cheifet showing a card. Fun fact: almost all pictures you find on the web show sample cards.
Why I write all this? Well, after many years, I just scored a LaserCard drive to read/write those! 🙂 While a complete flop in the consumer market, they were very successful e.g. for access control and used 'til the early 2000s. The last drives even had USB.
