15 million floppies

[Shooshie]

These kinds of reminiscences always end up reminding me of this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo&feature=kp

Yeahboy, back when I was using 15,000,000 floppies, I'd have to get up 6 hours before I went to bed, just to get the boxes open!

Shoosh

[frankf]

I've got a beige G3 I keep for firing up Studio Vision once a year and for accessing 3.5” "floppies", and a couple of SCSI HDs, SCSI Syquest and a SCSI Zip drive. I also have a G4 I've kept for some reason I can't remember. Not remembering why I kept it keeps me from getting rid of it! Anyone else have this affliction?


Frank Ferrucci

[bayswater]

Anyone else have this affliction?
Frank Ferrucci

Affliction indeed. Under the stairs, I have a G4, PM 8600, Atari Falcon, original Mac, iBook, old Minis, Syquest and Zip drives, boxes of exotic cables, CD writers, external drives, monitors, mixers, tape machines, various synths, keyboard stands, about 200 wall warts, and some amps. Even an old IBM PC. You never know ...

[Shooshie]

I have pretty much every computer, monitor, cable and disk I've ever owned. It's getting to be quite a collection. My daughter did persuade me to get rid of a few printers about 6 or 8 years ago. I also fire up the old computers now and then for the purpose of converting files, etc.

I've kept a G4 Titanium Powerbook and a Pismo G3 Powerbook operational since they were new, mainly to have a platform to run SimCity 4/Rush Hour. Recently that became available on my Mac Pro, so I guess I can break the tether now. But the Pismo is special. That's my favorite laptop of all time. Doesn't hold a candle to today's Mac Pros, but design-wise it's just beautiful.

Plus, on January 1, 2001, I was in the air, flying to work in Las Vegas, watching a movie on that machine (Pismo G3 Powerbook). The movie was 2001, A Space Odyssey. During the scene in which Dave and Frank were watching TV and being interviewed on what amounted to an iPad, I realized that what I was using wasn't that far removed, and that Arthur Clarke had not been off by much. The iPad would be another decade, however, and on that 2001 occasion I remember thinking "this Pismo Powerbook is probably about as close to Clarke's TV/communicator tablets as we'll ever get. After all, miniaturization can only go so far..." When the iPad came out, I remembered that moment. Now I place no limits on the realization of the imagination.

I heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the other day, saying that we should be watching out for someone who figures out how to warp space in order to bypass millions of light years of space travel via wormholes, by way of a warp drive, just like on Star Trek. At first I thought "no, there have to be limits to what we can..." and then I stopped. If Tyson is thinking it, I'd better be, too.

15,000,000 floppies in the space of a 1960s transistor radio; the future is unlimited.

Shooshie

[frankf]

You never know ...

One of my Dad's 8 brothers passed, this was a long time ago, and after cleaning out his small house, the surviving siblings loaded their cars with boxfulls of interesting stuff, unloaded them in my Dad's driveway, pulled up folding chairs and a couple of 50 gallon trash cans and starting going through everything. Packages of screws, cans of straightened nails, rusty tools, lamp wire, books, watches, you name it, all came out. As each one came out one of these depression era brothers would say "that's a nice thing to have" and the item
would end up in their personal pile to take home. In the end, there was only 1 shopping bag worth of stuff in the garbage cans. And yes, i walked away with a bag of treasure, too. I still have an unopened package of machine screws with hand written date of purchase of April 1959! Bless them all.

Nice thing to have, my G4

[Shooshie]

And yes, i walked away with a bag of treasure, too. I still have an unopened package of machine screws with hand written date of purchase of April 1959!

Frank, you hoarder, you!

I'd literally trade you my whole warehouse of crap, for which I pay $308/month to rent a roof and walls around it, for that little bag of screws. And I'd come out with the better end of the deal if we did that.

Shoosh

[mikehalloran]

Beige G3, Mac+, SE, Performa 6100, 6200, 8100, Motorola Clone with G3 card and a few others... all gone.

G4 with ATTO SCSI card, OS 9.2 / 10.4.11, 250mB Zip drive, still here.

[FMiguelez]

I heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the other day, saying that we should be watching out for someone who figures out how to warp space in order to bypass millions of light years of space travel via wormholes, by way of a warp drive, just like on Star Trek. At first I thought "no, there have to be limits to what we can..." and then I stopped. If Tyson is thinking it, I'd better be, too.

You mean like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Alcubierre

And this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

I love Tyson and the way he speaks and educates. I think he must definitely know Dr. Alcubierre.
Even though the technology for it is too far out of our reach at the moment, the hypotheses are there already... Just like we knew of atoms before we could see them and manipulate them, this "warp" business will be no different in that respect. The seeds are there.

Too bad we won't be here to witness it...

[Shooshie]

I heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the other day, saying that we should be watching out for someone who figures out how to warp space in order to bypass millions of light years of space travel via wormholes, by way of a warp drive, just like on Star Trek. At first I thought "no, there have to be limits to what we can..." and then I stopped. If Tyson is thinking it, I'd better be, too.

You mean like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Alcubierre

And this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Yep... There ya go! Warp drive on the way! Pretty amazing stuff.

I love Tyson and the way he speaks and educates. I think he must definitely know Dr. Alcubierre.
Even though the technology for it is too far out of our reach at the moment, the hypotheses are there already... Just like we knew of atoms before we could see them and manipulate them, this "warp" business will be no different in that respect. The seeds are there.

Too bad we won't be here to witness it...

It WOULD be nice to be immortal, wouldn't it? Nice as long as you didn't run up any gambling debts. I'm sure 500 years of some vice like a weakness for Las Vegas would have you inventing a warp drive yourself, just to get away!

But watching physics unfold would be one of the main benefits of living forever. It's always exciting to learn the latest.

Shoosh

[twistedtom]

We got our selfs some hoarders here.

[Babz]

Two words: Moore's law.

Things are getting exponentially smaller, and will soon reach the point where they will be the size of an atom. (Current Pentium processors are about 20 atoms thick.) The silicon era is quickly reaching its limits as we head towards something like quantum computing.

http://bigthink.com/videos/tweaking-moo ... on-era-2-2

Babz

[Babz]

You never know ...

One of my Dad's 8 brothers passed, this was a long time ago, and after cleaning out his small house, the surviving siblings loaded their cars with boxfulls of interesting stuff, unloaded them in my Dad's driveway, pulled up folding chairs and a couple of 50 gallon trash cans and starting going through everything. Packages of screws, cans of straightened nails, rusty tools, lamp wire, books, watches, you name it, all came out. As each one came out one of these depression era brothers would say "that's a nice thing to have" and the item
would end up in their personal pile to take home. In the end, there was only 1 shopping bag worth of stuff in the garbage cans. And yes, i walked away with a bag of treasure, too. I still have an unopened package of machine screws with hand written date of purchase of April 1959! Bless them all.

Nice thing to have, my G4

Two words, Frank: Collyer Brothers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers

Babz