The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Man cracks open floppy disk, inserts USB Flash drive

The return of the 3.5in diskette

The pictures say it all, really. Hardware hacker Charles Mangin this weekend posted the results of his attempt to slot the innards from a USB Flash drive into an old 3.5in floppy disk case - well, two of them, to be precise, the original casing not being quite thick enough for the cable and connector.

Charles Mangin Floppy Hack

Pictures: Charles Mangin

Says Charles on his Flickr page: "I decided that I would put a promotional USB drive I received at a trade show to good use. The drive itself was stuffed into something the size of a stack of business cards, and my thought was to try and cram those same innards into a floppy disk."

And that's what he did:

Charles Mangin Floppy Hack

He retained the disk itself so that, since the sliding cover ended up being fixed into the open position, users have something to look at other than the inside of the plastic case:

Charles Mangin Floppy Hack

"The final detail I added before sealing everything up," wrote Charles, is "the red activity LED. I lined up the tiny LED on the USB drive with a piece of translucent plastic, which pokes through to the write protect notch in the corner of the disk." ®

I FOUND SOME JUNK...

...AND I TOOK IT HOME AND PUT IT IN A BOX. REALLY TWO BOXES BODGED TOGETHER BECAUSE IT WOULDN'T FIT PROPERLY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PUBLISH THE PICTURES?

22
5

Slowest news day EVAR.

"Man fits small thing inside larger thing".

10
0

speechless...

I can't believe he ruined an official IBM reference disk for this project. What's he going to do if he NEEDS that disk one day to boot his 386? He'll be sorry then, he will.

6
0

True

...but as far as hacks go, this is a pretty poor attempt.

With just a *little* more effort and imagination, he could have come up with something more impressive.

4
1

Just because you can do something

Doesn't mean you should...

2
0

More from The Register

MYSTERY Nokia Lumia with gazillion-pixel camera 'spotted'
With 20Mp sensor - NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?
 breaking news
Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat
Upgrades Live service – and no always-on requirement
The iWatch is coming! The iWatch is coming!
Reports: Apple's wrister to have 1.5-inch OLED, test units being built
US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster
Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC
Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report
Wyse up, suckers, could this be a new set-side-stick?
Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook
All roads lead to Chrome?
Borked your iDevice? Pay EVEN MORE to have it fixed by Applecare
Or scream at their hapless techies on their forums
Review: Sony Xperia SP
The new mid-range marvel? Oh yes.
Euro PC shipments plummet into bottomless pit of DOOOOM
11th quarter of decline, 20pc drop on last year - Gartner