What do I classify solid state drive cards as? Under what category do I use to sell them to boardsort?

What’s an SSD and what is it classed as?
This is as wide and convoluted as can be. And I like to type!
So TLDR skip to the last paragraph where you get your BoardSort classes.

Here we go.
Let me start by saying I’m not doing a tech lesson here. So I’m not going to get into this memory type vs that.
Thoug technically it stands for solid state drive, SSD in the consumer sense is anything that uses flash chips for rewritable storage.
The “lay” person thinks of SSDs as a 2.5 inch drive filled with ram chips on a board. It plugs into a SATA port or a usb port.
More versed ‘I googled it’ people also consider mSATA and m2 and SAS cards, but generally the same beliefs on the idea. A tiny ram-stick-sized card with gold connectors or a box with a port.
Advanced users will add to the lot PCIe cards. eSATA boxes. And possibly equate the idea of a NAS or RAID case with SSDs as a single SSD.
Power users, gamers, and professionals have their own set of ideas on SSD definitions.
And retro users—myself included— have a far deeper, though generally inaccurate, thought on the subject.
;)

So:
What is an SSD
Technically an advanced EEPROM: electrically erasable programable programmable read only memory. With a write in place or write and delete algorithm.

SSDs in their basic form of true definition: use an electrical charge to flip the polarity of a tiny cell within a larger chip substrate.
They hold their values despite power loss.

So?
So what.
Let’s dive into consistent 0-power storage.
To do that we need to first cover the source of modern SSDs.

Power-on storage

Anyone who has played cartridge based video games knows where solid state storage comes from on a basic level. Be it your use of a Nintendo or Sega or TI or Commodore.
Your game packs that offered true field save had a battery. They used then-standard ram, and the battery kept the ram ‘fed’ so to speak even when the system was off.
Modern solid state drives use a faze change property in electro-mechanics to flip a charge. Positive or neutral. An idea that itself dates back to the 1940/1950s, bubble memory, and copper coil memory variations based on charge oxidation.
(I just lost more the half of the readers).

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Here I’ll dive into some basics before we get to the complicated world of businesses changing minor things to avoid patent payouts.

Ignoring one-off crap that never got more than a few purchases:
Storage for digital technology falls into three categories.

1) magnetic. The second method and the one widely used from 1968-2000.
Binary data is stored on magnetic media as + or 0 charge. This includes hard disks, 8, Quarter, And compact tapes, d-VHS (not to be confused with DTV), Zip, Jazz and even early laser guided optical recording (Floptical).

2) battery backed RAM or ROMs. This is every video game and computer cartridge that allowed on cart saving.
This is also the ram farm idea and the ram tree idea of the 80s some (me included) swore by.
Usually backed by a SO or ACBE battery, these store memory as long as there is a power source to the memory. Even if the host machine is dead or dies.
That also includes standard ram. Power off is data lost.

3) source stored charged memory.
The true SSD. Much like optical discs eg CD and DVD, an electrical charge sets the ‘hole’ of sorts to either having a charge (that is contained) or not.
Where optical burns a pit, source stored charged memory sets a controlled static charge (to be non technical but understandable).

The idea of chip based storage is as old as the first silicon chips. A junk scientist can set up a stored value slab of rock. That rock at the river or lake can store data just as well as a potato (google it on PopSci) or eggplant.
Citrus, oranges in particular, have the largest data ability and the worst programmability!
Yep: I went there and slipped into food storage. (Real, but useless).

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And here we are after a brief on the ideas. The classing for the buyer!

SD, MSD, and uSD are telco. case included. Also, TX, ZD, XD, TFC, MPC, zCart, MMC, XQD UFS, SxS (remove shell), smart media, P2 (remove shell), Micro P2, nano memory NM card, miniature card (remove shell), micro drive (remove shell), multimedia card mmc, memory stick, JEIDA (remove shell), CF (remove shell).
High peripheral


M2 and mSATA will be laptop WiFi

PC-CARD, express card, CF, remove case for high peripheral or low telco depending on population.

True SSDs
PCIe cards are clean gold finger
Most SAS-f SSDs will be gold finger cards.

Standard SSDs will be high or low telco depending on population

NT Card is the unlisted SIM card class. Sega SG and Master cards, as well as PC Card and Turbo card go here as well.

For the rest of the real world crap?
Most cartridge game’s not included above fall into 4 classes, after you remove the shell.

Silver/ tin connector cartridges will be low or high peripheral depending on the IC count. (2600 space invaders is barely low peripheral where the TI Pac-Man is the top of high peripheral).

Gold connector carts range from high peripheral (single chip) to high telco (many chips) to fingered laptop cards. Though most game and app cartridges will be clean gold finger cards if a decent population.

USB sticks are high peripheral.

If you have something not included in this list ask me.
As a rare change post here in the boardsort help forms (it’s too unusual for what is it) or/AND email me at admin at lostinlodos dot com. The rarities have a special place for me beyond BS and I’ll buy true unique samples myself.

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