3 ms·
I can't help but consider it a Flintstone-style proto-HDD where human-powered r/w heads move to read/write sectors.
by qwerty456127 4y ago
I can't help but consider it a Flintstone-style proto-HDD where human-powered r/w heads move to read/write sectors.
- iNate2000 4y agoOh! That reminds me of an idea I had once for a “kid-powered computer”. Here is a sketch that I made to illustrate how a disk-drive works: https://flic.kr/p/an8kAA https://flic.kr/p/an8kAA
- dredmorbius 4y agoYou don't have any plans, by chance, of designing perpetually-running trains, do you, Wilfred?
- dredmorbius 4y agoThat's pretty much precisely what this is, with 10 heads visible (there are several other banks of cabinets), each of which can address, erm, access, only a fixed set of storage (a 20w x 25h bank of drawers). Makes you think of total storage capacity vs. I/O bandwidth. Or what would happen if the data required reindexing or sorting.
- vincent-manis 4y agoIt reminded me of the automated tape library systems of the last century (I imagine that some of those might still be in operation).