Entries Tagged 'floppy Drives' ↓

The accompanying photograph brings together the old and the new — along with 8.1 gigs of total storage capacity.

The old part of the photo is the Zip disk. When it was introduced by Iomega in 1994, its 100 megabytes of storage made it the big Daddy of the portable-storage devices. it could hold about the same amount of data as 100 floppy disks — the plastic 3.5-inch disks that once were king of portable storage.

Both have been replaced by the flash drive. unlike the Zip drive, which required an external box to read it, flash drives plug into the USB port already contained on computers.

Which brings us to today’s well-dressed Zip disk in the picture. Attached to the drive are two fashionable cuff links.

But wait! That’s not all! Each cuff link conceals a flash drive capable of holding 4 gigabytes of data. it would take 2,845 floppy disks to hold 4 gigs of data — the amount held by one cuff link. And it would take 80 of the Zip disks pictured to carry the information contained on the two cuff links attached to it.

The cuff links pull apart (also pictured), and come in several styles and finishes, including silver, gold and gunmetal. Prices start at $195 the pair. Engraving with up to eight letters is available for an additional charge.

The side of the cuff link holding the memory fits snuggly into the other half of the cuff link, which can remain on the shirt cuff while the USB part is in use. I wouldn’t be concerned about the links accidently coming loose.

The memory part is small — about the size of a thumbnail and the thickness of a pencil. I would be careful about leaving it behind in a computer’s USB port.

The cuff links were designed by Ravi Ratan, whose family has been in the clothing store business. Ratan was working in another field when, in 1999, he bought the online name of cufflinks.com, The USB cuff links and dozens of other clever designs are for sale there. (They are available at some major retail stores as well.)

“I didn’t really do anything with it (the website) at first,” Ratan told the Dallas Business Journal in an interview this summer. “After a slew of emails about cuff links, I went out to stores and bought cuff links. I bought them at retail price and shot the pictures and sold them online in two days. this was a side job for a bit.”

It is a side job no longer. Cufflinks.com has five house brands with prices ranging from $40 to $5,000. The website has every type of cuff link imaginable. The pirate flag of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is available ($40), as are the logos of every other NFL team. Other sports are represented as well.

A set of cuff links for the Detroit Tigers is unique. The stitching from a baseball is set into the cuff links ($170). The website explains: “The stitches of authentic game-used balls from an actual Detroit Tigers game, set in sterling silver cuff links. … own a piece of history and proudly display your team spirit. every pair includes a hologram number. Search at mlb.com/authentication to find out more about the ball that was used to make your pair of cuff links.”

Really? a Cufflink.com spokeswoman supplied me with a holograph number from a set of those links. The authentication number, entered into the Major League Baseball website, tells me the ball was last used in Detroit’s Comerica Park in a game against Boston on May 8, 2008, when Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett threw a warm-up pitch in the dirt in the bottom of the fourth inning.

There are cuff links with “BUY” on one link and “SELL” on the other for stockbrokers (or a bull and bear for the more symbolic). there are donkeys and elephants to proclaim political parties. there are cuff links that are replicas of manhole covers from various cities, including Seattle, Chicago and Paris.

Like the Beatles? a Royal Mail postage stamp featured the Abbey Road album cover in a set issued in early 2007. two of the stamps have been made into a set of cuff links ($85).

There are cuff links with an abacus, poker chips, wine casks and the scales of justice. The company even has a cuff link commemorating Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, published in 1953.

Had computers been around in those days, Q would have been sure 007 had a set of USB cuff links up — or rather on — his sleeves.

[ Lonnie Brown can be reached by email at . ]

Hewlett-Packard has been in the PC business for more than 25 years. And, needless to say, it had some good designs. It’s worth a quick look at select models that stood the test of time in the wake of the disclosure today that the company is trying to unload its PC business.

The 3.5-pound HP EliteBook 2530p/2540p is a road warrior used at many Fortune 500 companies.

(Credit:Hewlett-Packard)

Let me preface this with a caveat that was buried in the various HP statements today about its PC business: “There can be no assurance that any transaction regarding PSG (Personal Systems Group) will be pursued or completed.” so, it’s not a done deal. And there is a possibility, however remote, that HP holds on to the PC business. my hope is that it survives as an independent U.S.-based company, if only because the U.S. has almost no PC companies left.

HP Vectra: This used to be the gold standard for corporate desktops. a fully-equipped HP Vectra ES/12 (released 1987), for example, commanded a price of about $4,000. but it was well built and almost invariably got good reviews–though reviewers would complain about its price tag, like they do today with Apple. the Vectra ES/12 had a 12MHz Intel 80286 CPU, 640KB RAM, 5.25 inch floppy, 20 (or 40) MB hard disk drive, and VGA card.

HP OmniBook 300: the original Omnibook 300 (1993) came with an Intel 386SXLV CPU, 2MB RAM, two PCMCIA slots, and a nine-inch monochrome VGA display with 16 shades of gray. the rechargeable battery offered nine hours of use with the flash memory model. It could also run on 4 AA batteries, according to the HP Computer Museum Web site. It weighed less than four pounds. a version with a 40MB hard disk sold for $1,950.

HP sold the equivalent of an Ultrabook back in 2000: the OmniBook 500.

(Credit:CNET)

HP OmniBook 500: Announced in 2000, this was the equivalent of an Ultrabook (aka, MacBook Air) today. like most novel HP laptop designs, it was targeted at business, not retail/consumer. It featured a magnesium casing, rubberized surface, a weight of only 3.5 pounds (the equivalent of a 2.5 pound laptop today), a one-inch thick chassis (that was considered razor thin in 2000), Intel Mobile Pentium III processor, a warm-swappable lithium-ion battery (up to 3.5 hours), a 12.1-inch XGA TFT display, ATI Mobility graphics chip, and an integrated modem/LAN combination with “Wake on LAN” support.

HP EliteBook 2540p: I still see this (and its predecessor the 2530p) at airports, coffee shops, and conferences. It’s not as prevalent as the ThinkPad, but it’s close. like the Vectra above, it is tank-like in construction. It meets military standards (MIL-STD 810G), has a spill-resistant keyboard with drains, a magnesium-alloy casing, and hardened-steel pin axels, among other road warrior features. And it’s one of the few laptops I have considered buying in the last few years aside from the MacBook Air that I now use.

I want to use an external floppy drive on my new laptop, but can get internal drives for free from a place where old computers are being thrown out. I've seen IDE to USB adapters on ebay but none of them say they work with floppies. does anyone know a way fo doing this?
To save myself buying an external drive i just want to use an internal one as external.