gloriouscow

someone said there are no CGA nerds, there are only CGA sickos.

I take offense to that, I can be both

You can see the 'furrows' here as the vertical stripes. These are written by the erase heads.

This is an image of a floppy disk taken by a special magneto-optical microscope. I'd love to have one to play around with, but they're a few thousand dollars.

The 'lip' on the left provides a backing pressure pad for Head 1 when it descends and the two heads clamp the floppy.

The heads are in physical contact with the floppy disk, which is why they are so important to keep clean.

This is one of two magnetic heads in TEAC FD-55BR high-density floppy drive. It's the beige plastic bit in the middle.

The actual head is on the right side - the black tuning-fork looking thing. Writing occurs at the 'stem' of the fork, where it splits, those are the two erase heads, which neatly trim the magnetic signal by laying down a gap to either side of the track, like a tractor tilling furrows in a magnetic field.

#retrocomputing

i'm gonna have to model that in blender aren't i

this is a good illustration of how the flux direction is recorded - the current direction through the coil will induce a directional magnetic domain through the magnetic coating directly beneath the tip.

this book is really fascinating. there's a whole chapter on the physics of rotating disks

@retrofan64

even MS wasn't consistent about it

someone in the last thread commented that the labels are upside down.

I've seen plenty of examples of labels oriented either way

I always put them in the storage case with the shutter down, so this is what i consider 'up'. Fight me

We were always running out of Magenta

they didn't tell you that you needed a PonyPrinter

Now in HD

#retrocomputing