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Vintage meets future: importing photos to an iPad from a floppy disk
The iPad's Camera Connection Kit is a remarkably talented accessory. With its standard USB connector plus a bit of ingenuity, clever folks have found all sorts of things to connect that would not ordinarily be expected to connect: headsets, keyboards and a variety of storage devices. You can even connect an iPhone to an iPad and import photos from one to the other. The latest demonstration of how flexible the CCK can be comes via vintage Mac fan Niles Mitchell. He pointed out this video showing an iPad importing photos (slowly and deliberately, to be sure) from a properly prepped floppy disk. Given a powered USB hub to provide adequate juice, it's possible to fake out the iPad's import process by using a MS-DOS/FAT formatted floppy and putting a "DCIM" folder on the disk. Any photos inside that folder that have DOS-legal filenames (8.3) will be read by the CCK and the iPad. Is it practical? Heck no. But it's still pretty cool. Video below.
Writer breaks down floppy drive history in detail, recalls the good sectors and the bad
There's been a lot of nostalgia circulating around the PC world in the past year, but there's only one element of early home computing history that everyone shares in common: the floppy drive. A guest writer posting at HP's Input Output blog, Steve Vaughan-Nichols, is acknowledging our shared sentimentality with a rare retrospective of those skinny magnetic disks from their beginning to their (effective) end. Many of us are familiar with the floppies that fed our Amigas, early Macs and IBM PCs; Vaughan-Nichols goes beyond that to address the frustrations that led to the first 8-inch floppy at IBM in 1967, the esoteric reasons behind the 5.25-inch size and other tidbits that might normally escape our memory. Don't be sad knowing that the floppy's story ends with a whimper, rather than a bang. Instead, be glad for the look back at a technology that arguably greased the wheels of the PC era, even if it sometimes led to getting more disks than you could ever use. Sorry about that. [Image credit: Al Pavangkanan, Flickr]
Daft Punk's 'Derezzed' finally heard the way it was meant to be -- on five floppy drives
Love costumed French electronic duos, movies about video games and music made by finding alternative uses for outdated computer hardware? Well, feast your ears on this. MrSolidSnake745, who already has a pretty healthy selection of floppy disked video game themes, is offering the world his take on Daft Punk's "Derezzed," from the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, played on five floppy drives. It's loud, it's chaotic and it's enough to make us want to pull the old lightcycle out of storage. Video after the break.
IBM turns 100, brags about bench pressing more than companies half its age
IBM is quite possibly the only tech company around that might have genuine difficulty whittling a list of its industry defining contributions down to a mere 100. And it's an impressively diverse collection at that, including the floppy disk, the social security system, the Apollo space missions, and the UPC barcode. All of this self-congratulation is not without cause, of course. IBM was born 100 years ago today in Endicott, New York, as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, a merger between three companies, all peddling different technologies. That diversity has helped define IBM from its inception, and has offered a sense of flexibility, making it possible to keep in step with technology's ever-quickening pace for a century. In 1944, the company helped usher in modern computing with the room-sized Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, and 37 years later, it played an important role in defining the era of home computing with the much more manageable IBM Personal Computer. In 1997, IBM introduced a machine that beat the world's reigning chess champion, and earlier this year, it created one that trounced two of the greatest players in Jeopardy history. These days, when the company is not building machines dedicated to outsmarting mankind, it's looking to promote sustainable development through its Smarter Planet program. So, happy centennial, Big Blue, and here's to 100 more, assuming your super-smart machines don't enslave us all in the meantime.
Osborne 1 celebrates its 30th birthday, and that of the portable computing revolution
On April 3rd, 1981 -- thirty years ago today -- Adam Osborne unveiled the Osborne 1 at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. It had a 4 MHz Zilog Z80 CPU, two single-sided floppy drives, 64K of RAM, and a five-inch monochrome CRT display. Nothing particularly special there, even back in the day. No, what made the Osborne 1 extraordinary was the fact that the 24-pound plastic machine had a carrying handle on the back -- and at the bargain price of $1,795 with software included, it became one of the first mass-produced portable computers to succeed. Which, of course, spurred competitors to create an army of even more luggable, loveable machines. Shortly after helping to change the course of history, Osborne and his computer fell into a spiral of pain, but the next time you admire the way your ultralight slides into a manila envelope, you'll know who to thank. Find a short but sweet chronicle of the Osborne 1 at our Technologizer link.
Phantom of the Floppera (video)
This is what happens when you connect a few floppy drives to a PIC18f14k50 microcontroller operated by a MIDI-wielding madman. Be sure to watch until at least the 2 minute 30 second mark for a 5 1/4 inch surprise. Look closely, and you might just notice that Box 5 was left empty. [Thanks, Jussi J.]
Floppy drive grows legs to avoid spills, still can't avoid extinction
We might one day live in a world where everyday electronics can fend for themselves against household disasters but, for the time being, we can only marvel at one of a kind projects like this "Floppy Legs" drive from British design team Chambers Judd. As you can probably surmise, they've added some legs to an otherwise ordinary external floppy drive, which remain concealed most of the time, but spring to life if there's liquid spilled near the drive. Head on past the break to see that amazing feat for yourself, and be sure to take a peek at some of the team's earlier projects as well, including the Gesundheit Radio that "sneezes" to clear away dust.
The floppy disk is dead (and Apple helped kill it)
It was 1998 and Apple had just released the iMac G3. It was a beautiful interesting computer: a sleek, all-in-one case, with something new called USB. One thing it didn't have was a floppy disk. At the time, many believed Apple was insane for leaving a floppy disk drive off the iMac, but did Steve Jobs care? Nope. The floppy was archaic technology to him. A CD-ROM drive was where it's at. Well, thirteen years later -- almost a decade after most people stopped using floppy disks, Sony, the inventor of the floppy disk, has officially announced that they are killing the 1.44MB storage device. As of next year, Sony will no longer manufacture the floppy disk. Most of my Word documents are larger than 1.44MB nowadays and I can't think of a single file I've created on my computer that I would need to transport to another computer, that would even fit on a floppy. Now that I think about it, I haven't actually used my Superdrive for reading or writing any optical media since I bought my MacBook Pro two years ago either. In another ten years, will optical media have gone of the way of the floppy? So, what have we learned? Steve was ridiculed for leaving the floppy off the iMac because he saw it as archaic. Now he gets to say "I told you so." If Steve does have the power to gaze into the tech future, Adobe should be worried about Flash going the way of the floppy, as Steve reportedly told the Wall Street Journal, dropping Flash is no different than the decision to drop the floppy drive from the iMac. Will he be right again? Only time will tell.
Sony shutting down Japanese floppy disk sales by March 2011, kills a tech dinosaur
Believe it or not, Sony managed to shift 12 million 3.5-inch floppy disks in Japan last year -- presumably to die-hard old schoolers. Alas, time waits for no one, and the venerable data transporter that started its life way back in 1981 is going to all but cease production by March of next year. Sony was the last of the major manufacturers to keep churning these bits of plastic out, but soon that too shall be no more. Having already shut down operations in most of the world, it's now noted the end of life for its domestic market, and thereby effectively consigned the floppy to the past. Good riddance, you might say, but we still remember fondly the wonder we experienced upon tearing apart our first 5.25-inch floppy disk. Ah well, the diskette goes the way of the cassette, guess that was predictable.
Cool ways to reuse an old Mac
Most Mac users will be among the first to tell you that they can be a little overprotective about their hardware. Of course, Apple has a great recycling program for older computers. But for some, sending off their old Mac that way would be a little like sending off your old faithful car to cash for clunkers. Sure, there is a benefit, but the idea of what happens to that old reliable friend once it's out of its owners hands inspires shudders. Of course it would be entirely possible to make good use of your old Mac if something predictable, like a media center, or a server for extra storage. Heck, even a reliable little Mac that still works at 10 years old could be put to use as a kid-friendly Internet-free computer for your child's bedroom. Even more fun would be using the ROM disc from an old Apple II to run an emulator for those old classic games that you still love on your shiny modern Mac. And all of these would be good uses, and in the case of the latter a fairly fun one. But, in true Mac geek creative style, some users have put their old Apple computers to even better use -- or at least more creative use.
Lenovo's floppy-equipped ThinkPad G50 for Japan
China's Lenovo is giving Japan some love with the new mid-range ThinkPad G50. It's a bit on the chunky side, and weighs in at a hefty 7.3 pounds, but we suppose that's to make room for the rather odd inclusion of a built-in floppy drive. The rest of the specs are a bit more standard, like the 15-inch display that ranges in resolution from XGA to SXGA+ (1,400 x 1,050), and the Celeron M or low-end Core Duo processor options. The base model is pretty bare on specs, with a mere 256MB of RAM, CD-ROM drive and 40GB HDD. We're not quite sure how the Core Duo models manage for specs, other than the PC card slot, gigabit Ethernet and four USB 2.0 ports that all the models share, but there's only room for improvement. The laptop is 2-inches thick at its biggest, and 1-inch thick at its thinnest, making room for a 2 hour battery, that manages 2.5 hours of juice for the Core Duo setups. So bust out that Commander Keen floppy, dig up 135,450 Yen ($1169 USD) and snap this thing up before someone else gets suckered into it.[Via Impress]
Floppy Disk Striped Raid on a Bondi Blue iMac
I have a little ditty for you dear TUAW reader:Oh how I love RAIDs, both useful and contrived!What beauty when my data is striped,Large or small, my data is safe with all.Take for example, this lovely Bondi Blue iMac with no less than five floppy disk drives (FDD's) "melded" into a " single super duper kalimazooper floppy drive." Pure poetry.[Thank you Hack-A-Day reader tutejszy!]
