Technabob » 5.25-inch

5-1/4″ Floppy Disk Wall Sconce: Storage at the Speed of Light

Technabob — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:00:42 +0000

Celebrate old school computing with this awesomely geeky wall sconce, made in the shape of an old 5-1/4″ floppy disk. Man, I haven’t used one of those in years – and I can’t say I miss it. Even with a double-sided/double-density floppy, I can’t even begin to fathom the number of floppies it would take to store what’s on my tiny little 128GB SDHC card. Still, it’s fun to reminisce, isn’t it? Write-protect tabs, FTW!

This floppy disk light is made from sturdy 1/4″ thick PVC, and uses LED backlighting to help it pop from your wall. While they’re very bright for LEDs, I wouldn’t expect this to provide sufficient illumination to read a book by. It’s really just an accent light. Also, don’t expect it to be 5-1/4″ square. It’s actually much bigger, at 12″x 12″. I suppose that’s good, but I wouldn’t have ever wanted to use a floppy that huge. Those heinous 8″ floppies were my limit.

If amber isn’t your color of choice, you can also order one with white, green, blue or red LEDs instead. The 5-1/4″ floppy wall lamp is available over on LuxChroma’s Etsy shop for $75(USD). Maybe someday we’ll look back and laugh at how much SD cards can hold too.

Apple ][ Disk Drive Modded Into a Mac Mini (or Vice Versa)

Technabob — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:27:18 +0000

This could be my favorite Mac Mini mod yet. Take one part retro Apple Disk ][ drive and one part Mac Mini, and what do you get? A little bit of casemodding genius.

Modder Charles Mangin took the guts out of his old Disk ][ enclosure and managed to find a way to squeeze the innards of a Mac Mini inside the case. The 5-1/4" drive is perfect for slot-loading DVDs. And when not loading a disk, you wouldn't ever know this was anything other than an old floppy drive.

Charles even wired up the old drive activity LED, so it looks like the floppy drive is cranking when the Mac Mini is on.

And contrary to the warning lable below, I don't think it would be a good idea to connect that video cable sticking out of the back to an Apple Disk ][ Interface Card. At best, flames would shoot out.

Kudos to Charles for a great mod! Maybe he can find a way to cram my iPhone into a Newton. Or my Macintosh IIfx into a MacBook Pro. That would be sweet.

[via MacRumors Forums]

5.25-Inch Floppy Disk Coasters Save Tabletops, Not Data

Technabob — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:46:11 +0000

For some strange reason, I never thought I’d write a story about floppy disk coasters twice. But these really floppy, floppy disk coasters I found over on Etsy today were just too good to be ignored.

Modeled after the truly retro 5-1/4″ floppy disk, these soft coasters are handmade from colorful felt, and just like their real-life cousins, are guaranteed not to store any of your data reliably. But they should keep your coffee table free of stains.

San Jose crafter TheGeekery handsews these coaster floppies from EcoSpun felt, which ironically happens to be recycled from the plastic bottles that your drink probably just came out of.

Each set sells for $28 (USD) and comes with four brightly colored floppies, packed in one of those old school floppy disk cases that used to clutter my closets back in the day. And if you prefer to go with classic black floppies, you can even specify your own custom colors.

So who really needs flash drives, hard disks and optical storage? I proclaim ‘let’s bring floppies back!’ Show your pro-floppy support by picking up a set over at TheGeekery’s Etsy shop.