6 ms·

It should also be noted that one of the reasons thumb drives took off when they did was not just due to USB.. as technically USB has been around for a few years

It should also be noted that one of the reasons thumb drives took off when they did was not just due to USB.. as technically USB has been around for a few years and there were things like CF card readers coming on the market, and other flash storage readers a few years earlier.. so why did it take until later? Because Win 95 and Win 98 did not have plug and play drivers for USB mass storage devices, at all. I think it wasn't until Win98SE (edit: for true generic controllers it may have been Win2K even?) that there was a USB driver for generic thumb drives. But theoretically the tech was around and could have been implemented as early as 1996.

jasode 4y ago
>But theoretically the tech was around and could have been implemented as early as 1996. The USB physical form-factor and electrical signals were 1996 but the protocol for storage devices appears to be later in 1998: Universal Serial Bus Mass Storage Class Specification Overview V1.0 Revision October 22, 1998 : https://cscott.net/usb_dev/data/devclass/usbmassover_10.pdf https://cscott.net/usb_dev/data/devclass/usbmassover_10.pdf
- theandrewbailey 4y ago
  > Universal Serial Bus Mass Storage Class Specification Back in the day, some of my friends called thumbdrives MSDs, because when you plugged one in, Windows would show a popup telling you that it found a new USB Mass Storage Device. I don't recall that initialism catching on with anybody.
jabbany 4y ago
Hmm, I remember still having to install individual drivers for USB thumb drives/sticks on our stock 98SE install. It was only until we "upgraded" to WinME that USB mass storage largely became plug-and-play. (Though, I think you could grab the winme usb drivers and plop them into a 98 install to get universal-ish usb mass storage, and later drives just ended up bundling a generic driver instead of a device specific one on the driver CD)
- ivanmontillam 4y ago
  I remember that and I also remember as well some thumb drives that went ahead an emulated a CD-ROM drive in another partition with the driver installer. After installing that driver you'd be able to see the other partition.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Android Phones do that today over Mass Storage...
brightball 4y ago
I still remember the first time I ever saw a thumb drive because it was in a spy movie, The Recruit. Immediately went looking for where I could find one.
myself248 4y ago
98SE still needed driver installation for every stick. It was WinME that included the first mass-storage generic class drivers. These were then backported to 98SE, and pretty much every vintagecomputing enthusiast with a 98 box is running this despite the anachronism, because authenticity is just such a massive PITA. https://vetusware.com/download/Universal%20USB%20Mass%20Storage%20Devices%20Driver%20for%20Windows%2098%202.3/?id=6845 https://vetusware.com/download/Universal%20USB%20Mass%20Stor... In case you're in the market for such a hack. :)
- namdnay 4y ago
  "Universal" USB stick support came slightly earlier, with 2k. I distinctly remember it being a game-changer
- cedilla 4y ago
  So, did usb sticks come with floppy disks or CDs with a driver?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I think it may have been a mix. There was also a mini CD thing around that time that sometimes got used for drivers. In general, things were switching over to CDs in the late 90s but as I recall floppies were still around for some purposes. ADDED: And as someone else mentioned, you sometimes downloaded drivers. Not everyone had broadband but Internet access was pretty common by then.
    - Breza 4y ago
      I'd forgotten about those mini-CDs. Part of the unboxing process was making sure you didn't scratch the driver disk.
      - themadturk 4y ago
        I got a mini-CD the other day with drivers for a new USB-C Ethernet dongle. I almost laughed out loud. I have a couple of external CD/DVD/BluRay drives around. But it's been a long time since I had an internal CD drive.

jasode 4y ago

>But theoretically the tech was around and could have been implemented as early as 1996. The USB physical form-factor and electrical signals were 1996 but the protocol for storage devices appears to be later in 1998: Universal Serial Bus Mass Storage Class Specification Overview V1.0 Revision October 22, 1998 : https://cscott.net/usb_dev/data/devclass/usbmassover_10.pdf https://cscott.net/usb_dev/data/devclass/usbmassover_10.pdf

theandrewbailey 4y ago
> Universal Serial Bus Mass Storage Class Specification Back in the day, some of my friends called thumbdrives MSDs, because when you plugged one in, Windows would show a popup telling you that it found a new USB Mass Storage Device. I don't recall that initialism catching on with anybody.

jabbany 4y ago

Hmm, I remember still having to install individual drivers for USB thumb drives/sticks on our stock 98SE install. It was only until we "upgraded" to WinME that USB mass storage largely became plug-and-play. (Though, I think you could grab the winme usb drivers and plop them into a 98 install to get universal-ish usb mass storage, and later drives just ended up bundling a generic driver instead of a device specific one on the driver CD)

ivanmontillam 4y ago
I remember that and I also remember as well some thumb drives that went ahead an emulated a CD-ROM drive in another partition with the driver installer. After installing that driver you'd be able to see the other partition.
- anthk 4y ago
  Android Phones do that today over Mass Storage...

brightball 4y ago

I still remember the first time I ever saw a thumb drive because it was in a spy movie, The Recruit. Immediately went looking for where I could find one.

myself248 4y ago

98SE still needed driver installation for every stick. It was WinME that included the first mass-storage generic class drivers. These were then backported to 98SE, and pretty much every vintagecomputing enthusiast with a 98 box is running this despite the anachronism, because authenticity is just such a massive PITA. https://vetusware.com/download/Universal%20USB%20Mass%20Storage%20Devices%20Driver%20for%20Windows%2098%202.3/?id=6845 https://vetusware.com/download/Universal%20USB%20Mass%20Stor... In case you're in the market for such a hack. :)

namdnay 4y ago
"Universal" USB stick support came slightly earlier, with 2k. I distinctly remember it being a game-changer
cedilla 4y ago
So, did usb sticks come with floppy disks or CDs with a driver?
- ghaff 4y ago
  I think it may have been a mix. There was also a mini CD thing around that time that sometimes got used for drivers. In general, things were switching over to CDs in the late 90s but as I recall floppies were still around for some purposes. ADDED: And as someone else mentioned, you sometimes downloaded drivers. Not everyone had broadband but Internet access was pretty common by then.
  - Breza 4y ago
    I'd forgotten about those mini-CDs. Part of the unboxing process was making sure you didn't scratch the driver disk.
    - themadturk 4y ago
      I got a mini-CD the other day with drivers for a new USB-C Ethernet dongle. I almost laughed out loud. I have a couple of external CD/DVD/BluRay drives around. But it's been a long time since I had an internal CD drive.