Industrial Engineer · phase 1 of 16 · noun

Memory Card

Removable storage used for program backup, firmware, recipes, or controller recovery.

The Explain card

Plain English
The memory card is removable storage that lives in the controller. It can hold a copy of the project, a firmware image, recipes or a full backup used to recover the controller.
Example
A CPU loses its program after a long power outage. On power up it loads the project from the card and the line starts without anyone finding the laptop.
Why it matters
A card with an old copy of the program can overwrite a newer one on boot, quietly undoing weeks of changes. Know what is on the card and when it was written before you trust it.
Hook
A backup is only a backup if you know which version it is.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

After a power cycle, the S7-1500 CPU loads the last project from the memory card in its front slot.

Why these words
  • memory Latin memoria, remembrance, from memor, mindful names what is kept, so the phrase is about the store the controller consults rather than the plastic it sits in
  • card Latin charta, paper leaf, via Old French carte makes that store a small board a hand can seat in the CPU slot, not a chip soldered to the module
Where it came from
Origin
English computing compound, from Latin memoria (remembrance, from memor, mindful) and Latin charta (paper leaf, via Old French carte)
Entered the language
1980s
What changed
Memory named the faculty of remembering, then the store of things remembered, then the electronic store a machine uses. Card named a leaf of paper, then a playing card, then a punch card, then a small plug-in board. Catalogs of the 1980s joined the two words for a rectangle of chips you could pull, and PLC vendors kept them for the slot on the CPU.
How it is spelled
Pattern
Latin -oria yields English -ory, so memory sits with history and factory
Pattern
English writes the vowel of card as ar, as in hard and yard
Breaks the pattern
the noun phrase stays two words; a hyphen appears only when the pair modifies another noun
Breaks the pattern
English never writes memorycard

Spelled like

  • history
  • factory
  • hard
  • yard
Broken into chunks
  • mem
    • remember
    • memorial
    • commemorate
  • ory
    • history
    • factory
    • inventory
  • card
    • postcard
    • discard
    • cardboard
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

  • memory bank
  • memory map
  • punch card
  • credit card

Open memory compounds

  • memory bank
  • memory map
  • memory leak

Card compounds

  • punch card
  • credit card
  • SD card

Controller hardware

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 1: PLC Controller Hardware

The box itself, from processor and rack to the modules that plug into it, because nothing else in the deck lands until you know what a PLC physically is.

Neighbours in this phase