- Old scanners were SCSI, which made me wonder if you could use them as boot devices, if you could stuff the scanner driver and OCR software into the BIOS. Might be easier now that we have uEFI.
- Nice little project.
Back in day, magazines distributed software on flexidisc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc) I remember it being very unreliable. The magazine instructed you to copy the flexidisc to a cassette tape first as you could only usually play the disc one or two times.
- Today, storage is so advanced that to the ordinary user it simply presents as some kind of non-leaky abstraction: small rectangular shape, no moving parts, stores blocks, retrieves blocks, low latency, high reliability.
Back then, the storage is was much more 'real': it was slow, made noises, degraded noticeably because of stray magnetic fields etc, complicated mechanical parts. By the hearing alone, you may spot problems.
- In my country they used to broadcast software for Atari 800 over radio - and it worked...
- One of the favorite records in my collection is the 8-Bit Construction Set 12" - chiptune + bootable Atari and C64 on the runouts.
https://www.discogs.com/master/321455-8-Bit-Construction-Set...
- Over a decade ago I was working for AWS on Glacier, we jokingly pitched an April fools day article about how Glacier stores customer data on vinyl records, and that 9 out of 10 customers preferred the feel of their data when restored.
AWS doesn't (or didn't) do April Fools day bits, so it didn't go anywhere, but the idea did amuse us in the team for a bit.
by buildsjets
0 subcomment
- You can boot Apple ][ software by connecting your old machine to the audio jack on your cell phone (might need a dongle these days) and streaming from websites like https://asciiexpress.net/gameserver/ . I imagine vinyl would work was well, but I don't have a lathe to cut my own vinyl records. If you feel like throwing a hundred bucks at it for chuckles, you could have one made at https://intheclouds.io/
- The physical aspect is what I most enjoy while DJing with vinyl.
While I do have a full "digital" DJ setup to nothing beats (no pun intended) the satisfaction of mixing the black circular slabs with no crutches available in the digital world.
Every mistake and imperfection of the groove is there for the listener to hear, with little room for error.
by thebruce87m
0 subcomment
- Tip: turn the volume all the way down before listening to the recording.
I had an unsettling worry that I was being programmed when I listened to it - a bit like an alternative to the virus in Pluribus.
- One of the most "real" features of vinyl records that I never really internalised until I started buying a few is that you can take a record out of its sleeve & look at the grooves to see how many tracks is on each side & how long each of the tracks is. You can also "skip" to tracks when playing (much better than tapes ever could) using this same method.
by foobarian
4 subcomments
- > built-in “cassette interface” of the PC (that was hardly ever used)
Wait a minute, what?? How did I not know about this.
- As someone that's spent time behind the decks, I wonder what kind of hacking could be done by letting someone like Qbert take the wheel while loading.
Part of the infamous sound of a dial-up connection being established was negotiating the speed of the connection. Now I'm thinking if you'd need a negotiation of 33 1/3, 45, or 78 as an advanced feature.
by guerrilla
1 subcomments
- Okay, that is very cool. I love how doable it is too if you can get hands on the media that is.
- Discussed at the time:
Booting from a vinyl record - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25177045 - Nov 2020 (157 comments)
- The first program I ever started on one day and finished on another was saved onto an audio cassette. And I thought that was pretty weird.
But like the vinyl it has really terrible random access behavior.
It would be sorta cool if someone used an auto repeat record and several copies in order to do a multi track streaming solution. With six players you can load the file in 1:02 instead of 6:10. Or perhaps 1:33 average if you don’t assume the record begins right when you’re ready to read and you have to wait ~31s average seek time.
- I used to have a cassette storage device for my Atari 800. This is totally geeky and awesome!
- Should have used his record cutter first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt6KMvkRM44
- The video from the article, in case you don't want to accept cookies: https://youtu.be/bqz65_YfcJg
It doesn't even say which type of cookies have to be accepted, I tried selecting just functional cookies, that didn't work. Funny how it's an arcane bunch of toggles in a cookie popup, on a page describing an arcane way of booting up a system.
by idontwantthis
0 subcomment
- How did he cut the record?
- Sure, because why not!
Cool idea.
by beardsciences
1 subcomments
- appears to be hugged to death for now.
- this probably isn't compatible with uefi or secure boot, huh? just by eye it looks more compatible with systems expecting a
master boot
record. :^)
by jackmarshl0w
0 subcomment
- Good alternative for recent storage shortage
by pocksuppet
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by hackomorespacko
0 subcomment
- [dead]
Hacker News