@TechConnectify I look forward to the point when my 2 year old has the tech history to understand what “Daddy used to take photos directly on a floppy disk in order to print them in a newspaper” technically means
In order to then be baffled at what a crazy world existed for that to be a true statement
@TechConnectify these were tiny. spinning. disk. drives. Totally not solid state, but spinny state it was glorious
@TechConnectify sure grandpa, it's time for bed though
@TechConnectify The failure rate on those tiny hdds was wild, turns out they don't deal well with any sudden shocks or vibrations. They were cute at least and a fun example of miniaturization.
@TechConnectify ZIF drives, I believe? Little 1.8" boyos. You can hear the one in my old iPod spin down sometimes.
@TechConnectify
This is why I had an MP3 player using a 3,5" Harddisk drive
@TechConnectify LowSpecGamer made a great video about it https://youtu.be/H1dzNuyq6O0
@TechConnectify Flashbacks to the Microdrive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
@TechConnectify Fun fact: 1.8" (PCMCIA form factor) drives were actually harder to design than 1" (CompactFlash form factor) drives. The challenge with PCMCIA was that the z-height limit was extremely tight. You could just barely squeeze a spindle and head assembly into the space allowed.
@TechConnectify I had an early non-iPod mp3 player that lasted only a few weeks because I dropped it on concrete while it was playing and caused a hard-drive corruption.
@TechConnectify I still have one, but it doesn’t see much use. It’s kind of fun to turn on and put up to your ear. You can hear the HDD spinning :)
@TechConnectify I'm wondering how those things could possibly handle being moved around as much as they did especially while running, like super walkmans, without damaging the drives. They must have had some robust protection on those things.
Bah, that was in 2001 - practically yesterday. Talk to the Old Ones, if any still remain. They are the ones who put 1.8" drives inside type II PCMCIA cards circa 1994. A good example that used them would be the Fujitsu Stylistic 500 and 1000 tablets; I assume other pen tablets of that era used them, too. They started out at 270 MB and later went up to 5GB.
@TechConnectify My partner still uses their iPod 5th gen.
@TechConnectify laughs in Clik Drive
@TechConnectify Don't forget about the Zunes! :-P
@TechConnectify There were small data tapes, too. NTC-120 here had an advertised data capacity of 120 minutes audio, 1.25 GB data. Of the media in this picture, I only still use the film. I have two cameras that take Minox cartridges and film in one of them right now.
(edit: forgot a unit and a bad autocorrect )
@TechConnectify Were they only for iPods, I thought they were a thing before the iPod, just rarely used. The platter size may have even been used in weird server HDDs for speed I think....
@TechConnectify sure grandpa let’s get you to bed
@TechConnectify Magnetic storage? Bah! In my day we used batteries to keep volatile ram powered enough to keep the our saved games.
@TechConnectify Apparently there are after market SSD ones for them now:
https://tinkerbetter.tube/w/q5ommxAYYy7kmG8P5M4yq9
I'm not sure how I feel about this, they're nowhere near as cool as a tiny mechanical thing, but on the other hand you can get new drives for them.
How amazing would it be if technology dictated that smartwatches had to have tiny spinning disk drives?
@TechConnectify didn’t the first MacBook also use them? Just MacBook not pro or air.
@TechConnectify the iPod mini had NO cache because it was JUST FAST ENOUGH that way to play mp3s. Truly an engineering marvel worthy of your attention
@TechConnectify and cameras!
compact flash form factor
wisdom of the elders:
we used to make tiny little hard disk drives for ipods