Olympus Recorder First To Feature Intel Miniature Card

Voice-to-PC Applications Enabled by New Digital Media

FOLSOM, Calif., June 17, 1997 – The first digital audio recorder using Intel's Series 100 Flash Memory Miniature Card for PC-compatible voice storage is being demonstrated at the Miniature Card Implementers Forum exhibit at PC Expo, Booth #152. The Olympus Digital Voice Recorder D1000, now shipping to retailers nationwide, uses 2- or 4-Megabyte Intel Flash Miniature Cards for maximum recording times of approximately 33- and 72- minutes, respectively.

Intel's Miniature Card is facilitating a growing market for voice storage-to-PC applications in the healthcare, legal and insurance markets, and for the mobile professional user. Once audio is stored in a digital format, voice information can be manipulated, transported and archived on a platform of existing PCs.

Miniature Card's flash memory technology brings digital audio recording to the desktop and voice mail server where the next generation of Unified Messaging applications will allow these voice recordings to become a replacement for the text of today's messages. At 2- and 4-Mbyte densities, Miniature Cards provide the data storage capacities needed for high-quality sound recording that will interface seamlessly into Unified Messaging systems on the desktop.

With Miniature Card, the Olympus Digital Voice Recorder D1000 meets the International Voice Association (IVA) specification for PC-compatible digital audio recording media. Formed by three leading audio equipment companies, Grundig AG, Olympus Optical Co., and Philips Speech Processing, the IVA specifies the Miniature Card flash memory format to ensure that their digital audio recording media is cross-system compatible.

A host of products based on the MCIF specification provide multiple options for data transfer of the new digital media to desktop and notebook PCs, such as reader/writers in Universal Serial Bus (USB) and parallel port versions, a USB-enabled keyboard that features a built-in Miniature Card socket for fast data transfer from the card to the PC, and passive adapters to facilitate Miniature Card data transfer via PCMCIA slots. Miniature Card-to-PC connectivity solutions work for any flash memory-based Miniature Card product, including AMD's, Fujitsu's and Sharp Corporation's, as well as Intel's.

FTL software, the data format that allows the PC operating system to read and write to a Miniature Card, is now included in Windows* 95 OSR-2 release to OEMs. FTL ensures data compatibility among Miniature Cards and host devices, such as digital cameras, digital audio recorders and handheld PCs, and is recognized by PCMCIA as the industry standard for flash data formats.

Intel's Series 100 Flash Memory Miniature Card is designed to store and exchange image, text and voice data. The Miniature Card Implementers Forum counts over 51 members from consumer electronic, PC, software, memory components and related companies. MCIF information, including the design specification, is available through its World Wide Web home page at www.mcif.org.

Intel is the largest supplier of flash memory products worldwide, according to market research firms Dataquest, Instat and Semico.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.