Sometimes, you build a thing because you need a thing. Sometimes, you do it just to see if you can. This project is in category two: [polymatt] didn’t need to create a floppy disk from scratch-– plenty of old disks still exist– but we’re glad he made the attempt because it makes for a fascinating video that’s embedded below.
Some of you are going to quibble with the terminology [polymatt] uses in this video: first of all, he didn’t begin by creating the universe, so is he really starting “from scratch”? Secondly, the “floppy” format he’s attempting to copy is a 3½” diskette, which does not flop at all.
Choosing newer stiff-walled medium does allow him to practice his CNC skills and make the coolest-looking floppy enclosure we’ve ever seen. (It turns out brushed aluminum is even cooler-looking than the translucent neon ones.) On the other hand, we can’t help but wonder if a lower-density format 5¼” disk might have been an easier hurdle to jump. The diskette that was built does magnetize, but it can’t read or write actual files. We wonder if the older format might have been more forgiving of grain size and composition of his ferrite coating. Even more forgiving still would be to use these techniques to make magnetic tape which is a perfectly viable way to store data.
Instead of storing data, you could make your own cleaning floppy. It’s not like data storage was really the point here, anyway– its not the destination, but the journey. So whatever you call this DIY diskette, please don’t call it a flop.
Thanks to [Anonymous] for the great tip!
Floppy is perfectly cromulent in this context. After all the disc is actually floppy. The case might not be sure, but the disc is.
Something that was discussed beyond any productive limit, several decades ago. But then, kids – what can you do?
Fun fact: prof in my first comp sci class (30+ yrs ago) did indeed call them stiffies, much to the amusement of the class.
I think it was fairly common in that generation, and we youngun’s ruined it with our juvenile humour. For shame.
Every generation of younguns had and has their own juvenile humor and I embrace it, even if I don’t understand it.
I still own an ‘8 inch floppy’ T shirt!
At first I thought you meant he joked about dead bodies*, only later I realized this is about erect penises.
* Have been a volunteer firefighter in our village for the last 13 years so we very often make dark jokes about dead people (stiffs) to somehow cope, stay at least partly sane and keep us from drinking too much. I’ve seen and removed bodies from plenty of fires, farming machinery accidents, car and motocycle crashes and others.
One of the nastier crashes I’ve seen was neighbours’ kid who got a 450 cc dirt bike as a present for his 18th birthday. You know – the kind of bike that can’t be registered to ride on public roads due to lack of lights, mirrors and other required equipment. He enjoyed it for about a week and… expired. According to a police report he “lost control” during overtaking, fell and slid right under a fully loaded truck coming from opposite direction at 90 km/h. Long bloody skid mark on a road and injuries incompatible with life. Funeral was done with close casket.
It hit especially hard since I knew this kid literally since he was born, often seen him playing in his backyard, take a bus to school, date local girl and finally die a horrible death. If only his parents had more common sense…
For what it’s worth, all my ER doctor friends use the same coping mechanism – apparently the galows type of humor is the release valve that keeps the the entire ER dept sane/functional.
It’s perhaps just in the video and lighting and more was probably not shown, but the surface didn’t look nearly smooth enough for anything to register at all. It looked like the solution should have been much thinner (as in more runny) for surface tension to smooth it out.
Unlike Bernoulli drives, floppy drive heads do not make contact with the media. They hover over it so the surface does not need to be perfectly smooth, just smooth enough to fly under the head.
Hard drives float the heads but floppy drive heads definitely make contact with the disks themselves. That is why you need to clean the heads of a floppy drive from time to time since they collect dirt from the disks and if the disks are in bad shape, maybe some of the magnetic media itself will come off on the heads.
I’m afraid you’re misinformed.
Single-sided floppy drives use a felt pad to push the floppy into r/w head on the other side. Double-sided floppy drives of course use springs to push the heads on either side of the disk into the disk and towards each other.
A head-cleaning disk can only be used with double-sided floppy drives. The fabric disk can clean both heads at the same time, since it is sandwiched in between them. If you put it in a single-sided drive, it can tear up the felt pad.
What you describe was IBMs preliminary stupid idea. Expensive and barely worked, afaik never commercialized. Then came Jugi Tandon with one of his brilliant KISS hacks – make bottom head fixed, move disk down. Everyone licensed this simple, cheap and durable design.
Tandon, Jugi oral history https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102738549/
Sure HaD wouldn’t miss on this one! Good catch!
ps: I approve your lame wordplay !
Our editors unfortunately missed some of the double entendres. They’ve been cleaned up a bit.
I appreciate the Carl Sagan reference. I could use a nice bit of apple pie right now.