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. Alas, the vernacular has decided that “stiffy” means something totally different that you ought not to hand a co-worker, and “floppy” is the word in use now.
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 stiff tip! If you want to slip us your tip, rest assured we will grab on and milk it for all it is worth to our readers.
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.
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.
Juvenile nonsense- sure, when I go to hackaday I’m always looking for dick jokes…
“Thanks to [Anonymous] for the stiff tip! If you want to slip us your tip, rest assured we will grab on and milk it for all it is worth to our readers.”
You watch too much porn: normal people aren’t always thinking about penis.
You do realize there are young readers that will see that, right? Completely inappropriate- you wouldn’t let it in the comments
Juvenile nonsense . . . but not for kids . . . Hmmm
God, who cares. Go be insufferable somewhere else.
The wordplay in this post — while admittedly lame — isn’t much worse than you’d have heard from a Disney movie in the 90s.
Every single one of those words is innocuous on its own, and incapable of harming children. If the hypothetical “younger reader” already knows the context to understand the subtext, then their innocence has already been lost.
Hey, if you’re not confident enough in your writing ability to need to resort to cheap, adolescent dirty jokes (and not even good ones), then by all means, alienate readers with your boys-club mysogeny.
Sure HaD wouldn’t miss on this one! Good catch!
ps: I approve your lame wordplay !