The distinction between main memory and storage will probably disappear. The 'disks' of the future will more closely resemble - logically as well as physically - current memory modules.

TKay wrote:

Compact flash is also being phased out, SD cards are far from ideal. Is this the end of the road for the old IDE interface? x)

CF cards will still be around for a very long time. These are heavily used in the industrie and as such, they stay important for the next one or two decades. See how long floppy drives were inportant for the industrie, being still used in many large machines used in production. That's why we have the Gotek floppy disk emulator now. So don't worry much.

Also, there are IDE to M.2 adapters already and M.2 will not die anytime soon either.

I don't think we should worry for SATA going away completely anytime soon (famous last words I know, that was what was said of SCSI about 20 years ago).

Lots of high end digital cameras still use CF cards.

oeuvre wrote:

Lots of high end digital cameras still use CF cards.

Actually Canon has moved from CF to SD several years ago. Not sure about Nikon but I imagine they did the same. Yes there are still many older cameras with CF but none of the currently produced models use it anymore.

(edit) ...and of course I'm wrong. The EOS-1D X Mark II and EOS 5D Mark IV still use use CF.

derSammler wrote:

CF cards will still be around for a very long time. These are heavily used in the industrie and as such, they stay important for the next one or two decades. See how long floppy drives were inportant for the industrie, being still used in many large machines used in production. That's why we have the Gotek floppy disk emulator now. So don't worry much.

Also, there are IDE to M.2 adapters already and M.2 will not die anytime soon either.

Do you recon CF will get more expensive as the market for them grows more niche?

Also as I understand the M.2 adapters only work with sata based M.2 drives. I think of these more as transitional drives than anything. Not sure how long these are gonna be manufactured before we switch over to pcie fully. Might be wrong though.
I guess sata ssds isn't a bad note to end it at. With the longevity some of the drives are touting they should last plenty long x)

Sooner or later, some company will probably come up with an NVMe-to-IDE bridge chip, specifically to keep industrial machines running, and some vendors on Ebay or so will start selling IDE adapters with NVMe-supporting M.2 slots on.

It is slightly amusing to imagine SSDs capable of >2000MB/s sustained read/write being bottlenecked all the way down to ~100MB/s (or worse) for purpose of IDE backwards compatibility, but that's how it would be.

SW-SSG wrote:

It is slightly amusing to imagine SSDs capable of >2000MB/s sustained read/write being bottlenecked all the way down to ~100MB/s (or worse) for purpose of IDE backwards compatibility, but that's how it would be.

And they will still be blazing fast in old rigs.

Ohhh I hope so! Definitely would acquire one of those.

SATA will still be around for another 10 years. There is no replacement on the horizon for standard spinning hard drives, which enterprise just uses heaps of.

I would guess you will have a harder time finding a working AGP gamer video card then you will finding a working IDE or SATA hard disk drive in the future. Todays spinning disks will also probably outlast current SSD drives.

There is still a lot of industrial equipment that uses both floppy and IDE ports so there will be aftermarket solutions that exist for a long time. The Gotek floppy emulators are a great example and I have found the IDE to SD adapters on ebay to be far more reliable than compact flash for IDE

If you want to futureproof, then stock up on replacement original parts and some of these aftermarket alternatives

Unknown_K wrote:

I would guess you will have a harder time finding a working AGP gamer video card then you will finding a working IDE or SATA hard disk drive in the future. Todays spinning disks will also probably outlast current SSD drives.

I disagree. SSDs could easily last 50 years. I have had only a single SSD die on me (that I wasn't actively and deliberately killing, long story), and that is a first generation sandforce drive.

Errius wrote:

The distinction between main memory and storage will probably disappear. The 'disks' of the future will more closely resemble - logically as well as physically - current memory modules.

This is in some sense already starting to happen with Intel's "Optane" SSD storage. It started off as M.2, but now they're coming out with versions that plug directly into DIMM slots. I THINK for now though, it only function as a sort of "accelerated cache" for existing drives and not as a separate drive on its own. The day may eventually come though when it can be used as both RAM and permanent storage.

SW-SSG wrote:

It is slightly amusing to imagine SSDs capable of >2000MB/s sustained read/write being bottlenecked all the way down to ~100MB/s (or worse) for purpose of IDE backwards compatibility, but that's how it would be.

This is happening even today.

You put some "faster" CF card on an ISA controller and you get around 1.5MB/s trasfer speed. While the card can do 30MB/s or more. But speed increase is even more evident with seek times around 0.1ms.

I have loads of IDE hard drives from 20MB up but use only CF adapters 😁

I'm a lot more comfortable buying used SATA SSDs than used hard drives. The mechanical fragility of hard drives makes it hard for me to trust buying old ones. They wear out, or they lose their seal/filtration, or they seize up, or they get ruined in shipping.
I don't have that fear with SSDs. It's hard for them to get damaged in shipping, and if they've sat around for 10 years, that probably won't affect them much either. Some of the older SSDs even use a type of Flash chip packaging with pins sticking out the side, so they can be soldered (though probably not easily). So they're at least a bit repairable.
However, I'm more comfortable with MLC (by which I mean 2-bit) drives than I am with the current TLC (3-bit) standard. I'm not at the point of stockpiling MLC drives, but I prefer them.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't really be happy with SSDs in older machines, especially 1990s systems. But I think they'll be a readily available option for as long as any of us will be around to care.

Recently I've been thinking about a mid-90s build and have considered buying a 5400-7200rpm SCSI drive on eBay, but I can't shake the feeling the drives will end up being faulty. I still want them though.

Side note: I had no idea 80-pin SCSI was so overwhelmingly dominant. I never even saw that connector before I started browsing drives on eBay a few days ago. It's a real strain to find 68-pin and 50-pin drives.
Same deal with 7200rpm. I'm surprised how most of the drives on eBay are 10K or 15K. I don't want those speeds, they're too hot and frantic sounding. The 7200rpm drives I've had (now dead) were pleasant.

I wish I had stockpiled 7200rpm SCSI drives back when they were younger and more cheaply available.

Please change topic to "Future storage media for old computers ?"
...

Thought this was about how to store your old computers.... 🤣

I'm certain industrial flash based IDE and SATA solutions will be made for a long time. Considering S370 boards are still made 20 years later, SDRAM is still made, IDE DOMs are still made today with major manufacturers having stated that they have no forseeable EOL date on the horizon, I don't think storage will be an issue in the next 10-20 years.

As time goes on, the ability for the enthusiast community to develop what is required will likely only continue to increase. With the proliferation of easy access to PCB manufacturing, component sourcing from around the world and a wealth of online knowledge, solutions will be found.

For Ultra SCSI grade adapter solutions... As i said in the other thread, maybe now than Intel/Altera are trying to make FPGA units and chips more affordable, someday we can have a SCSI2CF, SCSI2ATA or even a SCSI2SATA in the price range of the SCSI2SD, to use HighSpeed industrial CF cards, or ATA/SATA SSDs with UltraSCSI HBAs in DMA mode. Before wasn't possible without using a separated mid level expensive CPLD or an FPGA (for the extra GPIO pins need for CF/ATA controller block/interface, or the speed requirement of the SATA bus), adding an extra cost to the build.

Now, lets see how the Intel FPGA "arduino" goes, and if it finally can help FPGAs to get more mainstream in both availability and cost.