Getting an xD card reader in 2026

Those familiar with bridge cameras and mid-2000s chat speak may get a kick out of this post. Seventeen years after the format was officially retired by its backers, I’ve managed to track down a new xD card reader from a certain large mainland Chinese website. And here it is, with my two xD card specimens: xD-Picture Cards, as they were officially named, were sold from 2002 to 2009. The format was developed by Fujifilm and Olympus for their digital camera lines, and manufactured by Samsung and Toshiba. They were sold with capacities between 16 MB and 2 GB, though I never saw anything with less than 1 GB in the wild. They were faster than first generation MMC and SD cards, but just like Sony’s MemoryStick they couldn’t compete with their economies of scale, rapid development, and wide industry adoption. I didn’t realise they were based on the original SmartMedia card, according to a link on Wikipedia. They didn’t include a controller, delegating error detections and wear levelling to…