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Colin

This is way too satisfying.
(Mac Portable ejecting floppy in space)

24 comments
Karl Baron

@colinstu His name is also Colin so I had a "wait a minute" double take there for a second

Colin

@kalleboo I doubletake every time I hear his name too.
Another Colin?!

dr_a

@colinstu We need to get a grant funded for the @mediaarchaeologylab to recreate this with other powered eject computers.

Katy Swain

@colinstu That needs the Blue Danube as a soundtrack. #2001

FlatFootFox

@colinstu Scott Manley has a really nice video about the space shuttle’s early email exploits. There’s some really fun, “What if we just piped modem noises over the radio?” moments. m.youtube.com/watch?v=0mBurvPx

:evdonia_corner_emblem: Melanie Bjornsdottir (she)

@colinstu It feels like there’s aerodynamics going on (I assume the space has air in it)?

mint
@colinstu best part of that video istg i lost it
R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

@colinstu

I miss Mac floppy drives.
Especially the pre-1993ish ones before they cheaper out and introduced the "manual inject" ones that required you to shove the floppy all the way into the drive like the PC versions.

Having the floppy just handed to you was such a cool feeling.

Radio Azureus

@RL_Dane @colinstu

In the X86 Market we could only have that with the #zip drives

R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

@RadioAzureus @colinstu

I remember thinking the Jaz drives were such hot stuff.
Then in 2006 I got a 1GB flash drive that was about half the size of an SD card (no metal shield).
It was just one piece of epoxy/PCB somethingorother. I think it might've actually been a proof-of-concept product for MicroSD cards, which came out a little later. It was the first one-piece storage device I'd ever seen. No separate PCB/enclosure/shield, just one piece.

Radio Azureus

@RL_Dane @colinstu
I disliked #jazz #drives
I didn't like the fact that they were so bulky, were proprietary and that they were just fancy mechanical floppies in case in a very unnecessary sturdy package

They also didn't give you any mechanical warning when they were going to give out, so you had to have two more sets of backups to be sure that you're super high density Jazz floppy didn't crash on you at a moment that it was completely unexpected

I never bought them, just data salvage

@RL_Dane @colinstu
I disliked #jazz #drives
I didn't like the fact that they were so bulky, were proprietary and that they were just fancy mechanical floppies in case in a very unnecessary sturdy package

They also didn't give you any mechanical warning when they were going to give out, so you had to have two more sets of backups to be sure that you're super high density Jazz floppy didn't crash on you at a moment that it was completely unexpected

Colin

@RadioAzureus @RL_Dane never experienced Jaz/jazz so I can't speak to it, but SyQuest's "EZ" removable platter cartridge-based systems were a nightmare. Sure it was nice portable storage but holy crap the issues w/it back then. Single spec of dust & the whole thing was ruined. Swapped in a 300MB quantum in that SCSI enclosure eventually.
ZIP was downright reliable in comparison. Really never ran into much click of death issues (at least back then, and don't have it now so can't speak to today).

R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

@colinstu

Early macs had the best floppy drives. Motorized on both eject and "inject."

Later Mac floppies (after 1992 or so) only had motorized eject. You could tell because there was a cut-out to allow you to force the disk deeper into the mechanism for it to catch the disk.

I don't think the insertion was actually motorized, though, I think it just had some way of grabbing the disks easier. Not sure how exactly that worked.

TSource Engine Query
@colinstu that's how I expect computers to eject floppies, optical media, SD cards, USB drives, PCI-E cards...


and at higher, deadlier velocity!
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