"Sony has added some nifty new features. These include the ability to make copies of floppies using just the camera--very handy if you want to hand out extra disks on the spot. A new quarter-resolution (320 by 240) option also makes it faster to e-mail photographs. (The camera's full resolution is 640 by 480.) A built-in menu on the MVC-FD71's LCD screen permits you to easily take advantage of useful new options such as these."

Unsurprisingly, the camera which arguably first popularized consumer digital photography still has a following.
posted by 256 on Nov 16, 2012 - 40 comments

Moppy is a M_usical Fl_oppy controller program built for the Ardiuno UNO. (Github link.) Who dares argue the haunting refrain of the Imperial March fails to haunt ever more still when played back by floppy drive read-heads? Perhaps you'd enjoy Jonathan Coulton's Still Alive in the original 3.5", or Daft Punk's Tron anthem Derezzed? And though the season has lapsed, you can always cue up Carol of the Bells, primed and ready for December 2012.
posted by disillusioned on Jan 6, 2012 - 10 comments

Toccata and Fugue as played by floppy disc drives. SLYT [more inside]
posted by tim_in_oz on Feb 10, 2011 - 42 comments

Japan's Okunoshima Island once produced chemical weapons. After 1945, the facilities where shut down but the buildings remained and the island became famous for something else: Being home to hundreds and hundreds of rabbits. ((via)
posted by The Whelk on Dec 25, 2010 - 28 comments

The end of the world is nigh! For 3.5" floppy disks anyway, as one of the UK's biggest computer retailers announces its decision to stop selling floppy disks. But then again, perhaps there never was such a thing as a 3.5" floppy disk to begin with. Oh dear... I'm so confused. In that case I guess now, at the end of all things, it's probably a good idea to find out how floppy disks work.
posted by Second Account For Making Jokey Comments on Feb 3, 2007 - 53 comments

Where Apple goeth, the industry will follow . . . eventually. "Intel is finally inciting the death of the floppy drive and is calling on PC manufacturers big and small to stop supplying the once-capacious 1.44MB removable drive in the latter half of 2002." I remember the first 3.5 inchers (weren't they 400k) with my first Mac in '84. Yet another era passes.
posted by fpatrick on Oct 4, 2001 - 42 comments