ScuzzBlog: Diaries January 2020
Entry 12th January 2019: Post 01: Floppy Drives - The external slim.
Floppy Drives - The external slim.
Never been that much of a fan of the external floppy drive. As much
as I have used the little 'treasures' I have long held the view
that the designer of the floppy drive was a 'lefty' with a grudge.
And the reason... Why is it that every bloody thick cable that
feeds these things wants you to insert port connector upside down?
Seriously, if you lay the floppy drive next to the Amiga and then
just sit the cable so it lies in its natural state it will always
be upside down. And so you have to place strain on the port by
twisting the cable so that it connects. They are all the same.
I do know why. For some bonkers reason the folk that made these
cases thought that users would place the drive on the left , even
though the Amiga floppy and most computers is on the right.
The only way I can ever get these drive to sit comfortably is to
place it sideways on the back of the Amiga.
Floppy drives are slow and save very little information. I used
a high density drive for the most part, but very quickly moved onto
the ZIP drive and better, as with the PC, CD-ROM, DVD and now USB.
Raw data and games from software still need the floppy for me but
I was not sad to see the back of these things. And I have dozens.
In the day they came in their own manufacturers box which I guess
like many consumables are quite rare as they most likely got chucked.
Shame really as the box is a good way to store these things. Otherwise
you are always contending with that soddin' thick springy cable that
just likes to clear desks of everything as you swirl the thing
around.
It is quite incredible how the floppy evolved from the very large
drives like the 8" ones through the 5.25" era to the 3.5" both the
DD and HD versions. I do have some 8" disks, still sealed and
obviously unused. In the day I did look around for a drive but
wasn't lucky enough to get one. I have plenty of the 5.25" drives
which internally are a work of art. It's hard to imagine , just
how much kit went into saving such a small amount of data.
Just out of interest, the company Evesham were well known to me
as I introduced their products to the company I worked for. I do
still have a number of Evesham PCs and even one of their very
early computers. I was in dialogue with them at the time about
their plans for an Amiga museum at their offices. Sadly they went
bust before this happened. Hopefully all their Amiga kit found a
safe home.
That's about it, other than to say, look after your boxes. For what
ever you buy new and old. You would be amazed at how more rare
an item is with all its packaging.
Floppy Drives - The external slim.
This is not my image. Go visit the site above.
|
