Time to support the manufacturers who *do* include stuff like memory card sockets and 3.5mm headphone jacks if that's what you regard as important. Preferably with user-replaceable batteries too. The rest are in the wrong IMHO. For any device to be useful it has to support things that make it useful.

  TassyJim said  

Things are certainly getting smaller.

It is getting upgraded to a full pacemaker which is just as amazing for what it can do in a small package.

Jim

My father is 104 and on his THIRD pacemaker.  The second one had faulty firmware that was discovered in the model range after placement.  This firmware error led to a shortened battery life in the model range, so monitoring became more frequent.  It was changed after five years and the replacement has been going for about eight years now and still shows 5yrs 8 Months estimated battery life.  He has the silent 4G-linked monitoring device that interrogates the pacemaker by radio-link and reports back to the hospital at regular intervals.  The advance in pacemaker design and operation has been staggering.  These devices are truly microcontrollers, so I guess that this microcontroller forum is an appropriate place to discuss them! Today, pacemakers are inserted in a day-case theatre. The earliest ones needed open chest surgery!  I wish you well, Jim; it will make a great difference to your life as long as you stay clear of arc welders!  

@ChopperP;
Brian, please do not dismiss your monitoring device.  As a retired hospital specialist working in medical devices, I fully understand the job this does.  The evidence that the monitoring devices extend life is sufficient that the British National Health Service funds their use. They are expensive (over £1000 in the UK to the NHS) but are evidentially considered worthwhile by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence that advises the NHS.  Your smartwatch does absolutely nothing to replace your monitoring device. Pacemakers are incredibly complex as is their biological interaction with the heart.  Whilst the technology is very reliable, the biology can change and adjustments to the operating parameters become necessary. For example, the tissue around the leads can become fibrosed over time causing a change to the pulse voltage becoming necessary.  The monitor will spot such issues before you possibly become aware of them. If I had a pacemaker I would be so reassured to have this operating silently in the bedroom (It just needs to be within about 6ft of you so that it can radio-link to your pacemaker as necessary.)  

So, please, reinstate your very expensive and excellent piece of microcontroller telemetry.  It has a job to do.

  DigitalDreams said  

2tb Samsung extreme pro inserted in my old Samsung mobile and working well even though the specs say it shouldn't. Movies, all photos and videos taken over the years from all my mobiles and heaps more. Lots of space still, yet higher reliability as a result... Next mobile will have to be a Sony as most stupidly don't have memory card slots now (or headphone sockets) 😡

I couldn't be happier with Ulefone

  circuit said  

 I wish you well, Jim; it will make a great difference to your life as long as you stay clear of arc welders!  

I have a few weeks to complete a couple of welding jobs before the implant day.
I have also been told that I can't keep my phone in the shirt pocket anymore.
That's worse than no welding.

The loop-recorder cost my health insurance $1800 AUS. Not sure about the pacemaker.
Insurance doesn't cover the 300k round trip in a fuel crisis. Lucky we have an EV (which is OK with a pacemaker as long as I don't hug the charger).

Jim

  Grogster said  

I bought a 512GB ADATA micro-SD card the other week.
I then copied ALL of my Star Trek collection to it.

ALL of it.

To a medium smaller then my thumb-nail.

...

.....and 512GB is not even the biggest micro-SD card you can get now....

But I wouldn't trust these high-capacity memory cards as a long-term storage medium!

Modern NOR flash chips, like those used in SSDs and SD cards, usually have triple-level cells or even more bits stored in a single FET. This poses a risk of data loss over time. SSDs perform a "quasi-refresh" periodically by copying blocks. This is obviously impossible with an SD card stored in a drawer.

  toml_12953 said  

  Mixtel90 said  

There are no trusted sources, only those who will accept them back without quibble if they prove to be dodgy.

I've never had a bad card when ordering directly from

SanDisk

I guess it's all relative. I've had lots of Sandisk SD cards go belly up. But no Samsung cards, thus far.

  Martin H. said  

If you copy the movies, Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy  as well, things are going to get a bit tight

Movies yes, up to the last TNG one.

I don't have the DVD's of Strange New Worlds or Starfleet Acadamy.
The former, I am not sure if it has been released on DVD yet, and the latter is still being transmitted, so I definitely don't have that series.(on DVD)

  bfwolf said  

But I wouldn't trust these high-capacity memory cards as a long-term storage medium!

Oh, absolutely!  

This was just for the hell of it, and so I can put all my Star Trek on a uSD card-to-USB reader thing, and plonk it on a spare USB port on my mediaplayer.

Playback only, NOT the only copy - I have triple-redundant backups of all the files, and worst comes to worst, I can re-rip my original DVD copies. (but I would not want to do that - it would take a lot of time!!!)

I find it rather nice that the only backup medium that has proved to be stable over long periods of time are magnetic tape cartrid
>TAPE LOADING ERROR



:)

Magtapes have never been stable over long periods of time!!! They always required to be refreshed after some time. I did it once a year for long term archives.

Obligatory xkcd

Very good!      

  Grogster said  

Movies yes, up to the last TNG one.

I don't have the DVD's of Strange New Worlds or Starfleet Acadamy.
The former, I am not sure if it has been released on DVD yet, and the latter is still being transmitted, so I definitely don't have that series.(on DVD)

With DVD Sources, the data stream is still compressed using MPEG-2. There’s still room for improvement if you convert the files to H.264 or H.265 compression without any noticeable loss of quality.
Edited 2026-03-31 16:12 by Martin H.

Hi Martin,

Compressing the raw material with H.264 gives better video at lower bandwidth (smaller file size). But compressing a DVD (MPEG2) with H.264 is not improving anything. You need access to the master, or buy the blue ray.

Volhout

B.t.w. DVD's are not real time MPEG2 compressed, unlike TV broadcast. There is serious numbercrunching performed at variable bitrates to squeeze as much quality as possible into the medium.
Edited 2026-03-31 19:46 by Volhout

Yes, of late, I don't really "Rip" my DVD's any more.
I just copy the VOB files directly, and name them accordingly.

I used to rip them to H264, but the filesize was not all that different if I chose HQ video.
A difference of a couple of hundred MB between the MP4 and the original VOB.
With HDD sizes being what they are now, it's pretty much become a waste of effort to squeeze the DVD VOB's into MP4's.

HDD capacaties have had the same effect on music collections.
Last time I ripped all my CD's into MP3's @ 320, I kept all the WAV file masters.
I could do that easily, cos HDD space is not really an issue these days, whereas in the years gone by, HDD space was valuable, hence squeezing WAV's into MP3's @ 128 was the norm to save space.

I'd just finished ripping all my CD's into MP3's, when I realized that I probably should have used FLAC instead of MP3.  I could still do something like that now, as I kept all the WAV files, but again - why bother when HDD space is pletiful these days.

Rant, rant, rant, blah, blah, blah.....

  PhenixRising said  

I couldn't be happier with Ulefone

Interesting !