12 Responses:

1. fantasygoat says:

   19 years ago at 5:28 am

   Bastard! I just captured and resized that with the plans to post it myself!

   Sweet ircimages.com. I've been relying on it too heavily lately.

   • cetan says:

     19 years ago at 5:33 am

     Color correcting the image makes it look far more "THX 1138"-like.

     Or maybe just more like "Willy Wonka."

     http://www.phule.net/stuff/new_hard_drive_fixed.jpg

   • deadprogrammer says:

     19 years ago at 7:07 am

     You still can. Maybe the chain of A-list blogger -> A-list blogger -> B-list blogger -> C-list blogger will add any more information to the original post (which does not seem to credit the source of the picture).

     • fantasygoat says:

       19 years ago at 7:18 am

       Well I'm unaware of the chain prior to IRC unfortunately. Although I do enjoy the meta effect of taking images from IRC, reformating and colour correcting them, posting them, and seeing them end up back on IRC in a week or so.

2. nichiyume says:

   19 years ago at 5:40 am

   still making keys the old way?

3. jkonrath says:

   19 years ago at 7:51 am

   Hey! Is that John Kerry?

4. fantasygoat says:

   19 years ago at 7:52 am

   From Boing Boing:

   "The picture is of a fixed-head disk, very similar to a Borroughs unit I had the pleasure of disassembling (in 1975) after a catastrophic head crash (I got authorization from Gordon Bell himself to do it). It took me 3 days to whittle it down to nuts and bolts, and the platter weighed 18 pounds. The hub upon which the platter was mounted was phosphor bronze, and weighed an additional 17 pounds. So imagine the inertia of 35 pounds spinning at 3600 RPM. It had electric brakes, because if you just switched off the power, it would spin for a loooong time. There is an (apocryphal) story of movers just hitting the circuit breaker (not the off switch that engaged the brakes), and after waiting the requisite 5 minutes for spindown, loaded the drive into a truck. All the moves and hallways were right angles, of course. Since brakes had not been engaged, it was still spinning at 2000 RPM or so by the time it was loaded. When the truck turned a corner, the drive precessed right out through the side of the truck. It held a few megabytes at most, if I recall correctly (a similar unit was used as a swap disk on the PDP-10, so it would have held 256K or so)."

   • bitwise says:

     19 years ago at 10:09 am

     Wouldn't a massive gyro, upon being loaded in a truck, simply try to twist in place as the truck turned a corner?

     I find it hard to believe somebody loads sensitive equipment with several hundred pounds of mass into a truck and doesn't tie it down firmly enough to resist the forces from the spinning mass. I mean, are the forces generated by trying to rotate the thing really that much greater that just, say, slamming on the brakes?

     Presumably there's someone here who remembers mechanical engineering dynamics better than me.

     • 33mhz says:

       19 years ago at 10:23 am

       ...There is an (apocryphal) story of movers just hitting the circuit breaker (not the off switch that engaged the brakes)...

5. dygel says:

   19 years ago at 5:22 pm

   Oompa Loompa Doomity Doo!

6. xunker says:

   19 years ago at 7:51 am

   Exhibit AExhibit BImitation is the sincerest form of.. whatever.

7. recrea33 says:

   19 years ago at 10:43 pm

   i just sprayed tea all over my monitor.

   hi ho, i guess it needed a clean anyway.