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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.

23 June at 13:16 | Wall-to-wall | Open on fosstodon.org
6 comments
Radio Azureus

@RL_Dane @colinstu

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

24 June at 1:05 | Open on mastodon.social
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.

24 June at 16:06 | Open on fosstodon.org
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

24 June at 16:47 | Open on mastodon.social
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).

24 June at 17:42 | Open on birdbutt.com
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