Machine Independent Storage Idea...

Hello, Fellow Cyber-Archaeologists, I have an idea... (everybody duck) One of the more common problems in the field of classic computers is that of loading operating systems, programs, and data onto an old machine. Could we not come up with a standard means of information interchange? I would suggest the USB memory sticks one sees everywhere now. I just bought a few of them at about four dollars each -- and each one stores a gigabyte of information. I was thinking... could we not develop, say, an S-100, an S-50, an Apple II circuit board that accepts these sticks? An RL02 equivalent controller that reads memory sticks, and pretends they are drives? Information could be stored on any modern machine, loaded onto a memory stick in a jiffy, and used to load up a copy of vital data for any information-starved machine. Each area of specialty would only need one card (or device) developed, along with a set of files and programs necessary (or just mildly useful) for booting up and running the target machine. As a bonus, one Gig of RAM memory would be a powerful drive on many older machines, and would speed the system up immensely. I'm currently spiffing up a couple of CP/M machines, and after all this time, the diskettes spinning up to read a few K at a time is almost physically painful. For me, the joy comes in USING the older machines, rather than the process of fixing them up. YMMV. But, I sure would enjoy having a gigabyte of fast storage available -- it could include a bootable CP/M image, and the entire SIG/M Public Domain library, and still have most of the disk free. Equivalencies could be made for many other machines. Does anyone have an interest in setting up some common scheme for the hardware design, and data storage so that cards and interfaces could use some common circuitry, with a separate hardware equivalent of a BIOS (implementation dependent area) that would be different for different machine applications? Comments, anyone? Has this been done? Would people see it as an abomination or boon? Who would be interested in (and capable of) producing a USB interface card for "their" computers? Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net