VexedTech-Episode 17

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VexedTech – Episode 17 “Swiss Chips & Floppy Disks”

Featuring Paul Salzman, Gerard Massey and Sam Crawford
Special Guest: Paul Shadwell

UPDATE: Save 20% off now through April at griffintechnology.com using code VEXEDGRIFFIN1

In This Episode:

Check out our topics submission form at vexedtech.com
Simulcast to uStream.tv
Introducing Paul Shadwell, IT Professional
Yahoo’s Zimbra Desktop 1.0 released (cnet)
Hackintosh Discussions
Rumors rage around Verizon and iPhone
Microsoft’s Pink Smartphone (Engadget)
Google Voice & GV Mobile
Swine Flu pandemic underway- follow it (Gizmodo)
Interview: Richard Thalheimer of Richard|Solo
Hard-drive enclosure quality crappy & high failure rate
Hard-drive failure rate seems higher than the old days
Debit-card woes & why are we still using magnetic strips?
What happened to the smart-chip credit card?
Remembering the 8″ and 5-1/4″ floppy disks
A bunch more…
Our Solution Picks (see below)
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/vexedtech
Follow us on Plurk: plurk.com/vexedtech

Show Links/Picks Discussed:

Paul’s Picks: NewerTech Voyager Q (at OWC)
Gerard’s Picks: (all iTunes Store links) Birdhouse by Sandwich Dynamics $3.99 & Magnificent Gizmos & Gadgets by Publisher X $1.99 (light version available here) & Noiseblaster by Omer Shoor $0.99
Next Week: LiveScribe Product Review
Next Week: May be recording on Thursday–watch site & Twitter for details
Look for the VexedTech Quick Tip Minute coming soon!
Paul: paulsalzman.com/blog or Twitter @psimac
Gerard: iGerardftw.com or Twitter @igerard or myspace.com/boatcrashontheparkway
Sam Crawford’s dyznone.com or Twitter @dzynone
Ambrosia Software: thanks for hooking us up! Check their great software out on the Web. Comment on our site and win!

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[podcast]/media/vt0017_VexedTech.mp3[/podcast]

Recorded: April 28, 2009
Posted: April 30, 2009
Length: 01:35:16

Paul Shadwell

Following on from my story of ancient hard drives I thought I'd clarify a couple of points and correct some errata.
I said the capacity of the Gilliver drives was 160KB but 160MB was in my head, I remember it seemed a lot at the time and this was before the PC had launched, it was circa 1978. So I did some research and found the following which may be of interest.
The picture here shows a single platter Gulliver drive but I remember there being at least 4 platters (each platter was 5 or 9MB) in the drives we worked with and they were double sided. This brings me to the thought that maybe these were in fact 60MB drives. Here is a picture http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645... You can see the clear case. These drives were big, they fitted full width into a 19" rack. The word processor systems I was working on had 2 drives. One of the demos of the WP system was very fast data retrieval. I created a 16 page (most you could rotate through in very fast succession) animation of a 4 cylinder engine. This animation was used at a trade exhibition of the units.
The original IBM 62GV "Gullivers" drives launched in 1975 and as technology progressed rather slowly in those days I can well imagine we were working on updated versions of the same drive in '78, '79.
Here is an interesting view of the history of the hard disk. http://forums.legitreviews.com/about16883.html

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