Technabob » floppy

Imperial March on Floppy Drives: the Empire Strikes Hack

Lambert Varias — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 14:00:17 +0000

What is it with floppy disks and the Imperial March? I’m sure many of you have seen this video of a floppy disk and a floppy drive playing Darth Vader’s theme. And if there are two of them on YouTube, there must be more out there. A modder ironically named Silent has done the same, but this time with two floppy drives:

Silent used an ATMega microcontroller to move the magnetic heads on the drives at the right frequency, thereby producing the music. You decide which version is better:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Actually, it doesn’t matter which is better. Both are great. It’s just that this four-floppy orchestra is trumps them both.

[via Silent's Projects via Make:]

3D Printed MicroSD Reader Poses as Micro Atari 810 Floppy Drive

Range — Sat, 07 May 2011 13:03:21 +0000

There’s something so forgettable about microSD readers. That’s why I think that this little hack is awesome. It makes a microSD card reader look like a tiny Atari 810 Floppy drive. Rossum made this miniature using a 3D printer, which is even cooler in my opinion.

I like the tribute to the Atari 810, and from the schematics and what Rossum posted, it doesn’t look too complicated to make your own. The best part is that the 3D printing was done off-site thanks to Shapeways, meaning that you don’t need a 3D printer in your home to do this.

Not only does the drive look just like the original, he’s actually hacked it to work with an actual Atari computer as a data source, loading it up with Atari disk images and applications.

[via Boing Boing via Make:]

Floppy Drive Protects Itself From Its Natural Enemy

Technabob — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:14:50 +0000

What happens when you spill a full cup of coffee under your old Apple 5-1/4″ floppy drive? I’d expect it to either damage the mechanism, or at least make a mess you had to wipe off the bottom of the drive.

Well if you think like the guys at Chambers Judd, you might imagine it doing something like this…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Yep, that’s right, this particular floppy drive sprouts legs to avoid spills. Floppy Legs is one of several creations of their fictitious “Attenborough Design Group”, which takes concepts found in nature to create products which automatically defend themselves from everyday threats. You can check out more of their wacky creations here.

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]

What if Software Still Shipped on 3.5-Inch Disks?

Technabob — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:00:13 +0000

Remember the good old 3.5-inch floppy disk? Now remember how annoying it was when you had to install a program that spanned 4 or 5 disks? Well, imagine what life would be like if you had to install today’s bloatware on your computer using floppies. That’s exactly what the designers at Antrepo Design Industry envisioned in their new series series of art prints.

I had to do a double-take when I first saw it, but Adobe Photoshop CS4 would take up 358 floppies, and that’s not the full CS4 suite.

And your little lightweight browser, Firefox, all of a sudden wouldn’t seem particularly compact if it shipped on 36 disks.

And while iTunes 8 is no slouch on 46 floppies, the true heavyweight champion in this poster series has to be EA’s SIMS 3, which would take up an unbelievable 1,760 3.5-inch floppies. Or in other words, a stack of floppies that would be over 19-feet tall when piled one on top of another.

My arm hurts just thinking about having to swap disks that many times. If software companies really wanted to prevent piracy, I suppose they could always go back to distributing their programs on floppies. The number of disks you’d have to copy would be more than enough of a deterrent.

If you’re looking for some great art for your computer room, you can grab a set of 4 limited edition, hand-signed digital prints (each one measuring in at a substantial 18.9″ x 26.8″) over at the AntrepoShop for $120 (USD).

I wonder how many floppies it would take to install Metal Gear Solid 4 on my PS3.

[via Behance]