Garage Band, Pro Tools, Logic, sequencers on tablets and phones—anyone can create music these days with zero programming knowledge. But Diode Milliampere shows you how it was done with MS-DOS. Yes, that command line inputting, C-drive accessing MS-DOS from 30 years ago. It turned out pretty well!
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Can you imagine the conversation you would have with a child, hell, a tween, about this coffee table? “You see, son. Before the cloud and usb sticks. Before hard drives and iPhones and Androids. Before the iPod and even before the CD player, there was something called the floppy disk. And it stored 1.44MB. Yeah, I know. You sext bigger files than that. But the thing is, people actually used the floppy disk like we use flash drives today!” More »
After you’ve grown tired of your Nintendo controller and VHS tape coffee tables, what’s next? Well if you’re moving your way through the evolution of consumer electronics, then your next move might be this 3.5″ floppy disk table.
The FloppyTable is made by Axel van Exel and Marian Neulant of Neuland van Exel, and looks just like a giant-sized version of the classic storage medium. Of course, since this version is made from hot-rolled steel instead of plastic, it’s bound to weigh a bit more. The table measures 27.56″ width x 25.59″ height x 17.72″ depth, making it roughly… a crap-ton bigger than an actual floppy disk.
It’s also got a nifty storage compartment inside, that’s revealed by sliding the metal disk cover to the side. Inside, you can stash your remote controls, or if you still expect it to store data, you can keep a bunch of USB flash drives in there.
For more info on the FloppyTable, head on over to the project’s website.
And when the 3.5″ floppy table has worn out its welcome in your living room, then it’s time to move on to the iPhone table, right?
[via Core77 via Laughing Squid]
Have a bunch of old 3.5″ floppy disks lying around? If you still have some left over after converting them into paintings or handbags, you might want to redecorate your room with a floppy disk lampshade.
That’s exactly what Instructables contributor Technohippy did with his spare floppies. All it took to make this floppy disk lampshade was 17 floppy disks, 44 cable ties, and some basic hand tools. While this particular design was for a ceiling fixture, there’s no reason you couldn’t apply the same concept to a table or floor lamp too. Keep in mind that you’ll want to go with a fluorescent or LED lamp inside the fixture so as not to melt your floppies, and fill your home with the noxious fumes of burning plastic.
Pop on over to Instructables for the full build instructions. I wonder what we’ll make out of USB flash drives when they’re eventually obsolete and replaced with holographic memory or something altogether different.
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]
Writer breaks down floppy drive history in detail, recalls the good sectors and the bad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The other night, a friend and I happened upon a rather old, beat up photo booth. I love a photo booth. I will never not shell out a few bucks for a strip of pictures, when there’s a photo booth near by. So you can imagine my frustration upon seeing the above pictured text on the old, graffitied-over screen. More »
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