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Blogger rossum recently played Zork for the first time in three decades, and it inspired him to make a tiny model of the Atari 810 drive. This one, however, reads SD cards. The picture above shows his drive sitting on top of an original 810.
Link via Geekosystem
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Sure, you can use your old 3.5″ floppy disks as coasters or to prop up uneven table legs, but why not try something a bit more creative? Stanislav, a reader of TechEBlog, made a laptop bag out of a bunch of them.
Link via Geek Crafts | Previously: Floppy Disks as Art Medium
We’ve seen floppy disk drives altered to serve as musical instruments, but not quite as sophisticated as this set up by YouTube user FunToTheHead. In this performance, he performs Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor:
Features two 3 1/2″ drives and two 5 1/4″ drives connected to a PIC18f14k50 microcontroller. It interfaces to any MIDI source via MIDI over USB. Straight MIDI would also be possible with an additional small circuit and some minor firmware changes. This initial version can respond to all 128 MIDI notes, and pitch bends +/- 2 semitones.
As it can produce only four simultaneous notes, and each drive has a different range and tonal characteristics, best results are obtained by arranging compositions by hand. However, it features two modes of operation: in one mode, MIDI channels 1 through 4 are played directly on floppy drives 1 through 4. In the other mode, all 16 MIDI channels are read, and notes are “intelligently” divvied out on a first-come, first-serve basis. “Note stealing” ensures that melody lines sound, but chords are often cut short. One or the other produces acceptable results for many unmodified MIDI files straight out of your favorite media player.
via Geek Dad
Charles Mangin made a USB flash drive that fits inside a stack of two 3.5 inch floppy disks:
I extended the original cable from the business card USB drive, and routed it through a small piece of plastic, glued in place just inside the opening. This lets out just enough of the cable to plug into a hub or laptop, but prevents me pulling the wires all the way out.
Link via Technabob | Maker’s Website
London-based designer Chambers Judd modified the floppy disk drive pictured above. Normally it lies flat, but the moment that it comes in contact with a liquid, little legs raise it up out of danger. Video at the link.
Link via CrunchGear | Photo: Chambers Judd
The Sony Corporation, which created the 3.5 inch floppy disk in 1981, will cease production of the format next year:
With the advent of CDs and later, DVDs, the use of the plastic floppys and its limited storage capacity were quickly deserted.
After the Apple G3, along with PCs, began shipping without the drives pre-installed the disks became virtually obsolete. However, the death of the format has only now become official with Sony’s decision. [...]
The 3.5 inch floppy was first introduced in 1981, and hit the height of its sales in 2000.
Link via Nerd Bastards | Photo: flickr user matsuyuki used under Creative Commons license
Previously on Neatorama: Floppy Disks at Art Medium
“Unidentified” and “A Collection of Memories” by Nick Gentry
Nick Gentry uses old floppy disks, VHS tapes, and other antiquated media storage devices as his chosen medium for painting. The subjects tend to be facial in nature, most likely due to the omnipresence of circular mechanisms inherent in such things. From his About section:
Throughout history, information has always been recorded on physical objects. Important documents, favourite songs, videos and more were stored on mountains of tapes, polaroids, cassettes and disks. As media is rapidly absorbed into the World Wide Web the rich variety of formats of the past are becoming obsolete.
This represents a big shift away from physical, real world objects, driving towards a human existence that is ultimately governed by billions of invisible data files.
Each floppy disk used in the paintings has a history and story of its own. It represents the increasing pace of the modern life cycle, where objects are created, used and disposed of quicker than ever. To challenge this notion, as these personal artefacts of life are cast aside, the obsolete are now given new life and a renewed purpose by using them as a medium for art.
Link for more of his outstanding work. (via Twisted Sifter)
This floppy disk drive has been altered to play the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars. I have no idea how, but here’s an explanation floating around the blogosphere:
I can’t find any documentation for this, nor can I help posting it. I assume it’s a hardware hack that manually controls the floppy drive’s stepper motor, but it’d make my day if this was done in software using standard I/O requests. Either way, the 3.5 inch FDD finally serves an important function again.
