Mysterious 20-Year-Old Analog Media?

discHead asks: "Presently I work for a transcription company. We received an interesting medium that we're having trouble identifying. It looks like a 3.5-inch floppy, but just the magnetic disc itself--no plastic shell, not even a metal hub in the center. It's punched with a small center hole and an additional wedge-shaped hole nearby (but in a different position and smaller than the rectangular hole in a standard floppy's metal hub). It's foil-stamped with a 3M logo and a serial number, but 3M referred us to Imation and Imation is stumped. Our only other clues: we're told it's an analog(!) audio recording and that it dates back to about 1985. Our Google research has yet to turn up anything. Anyone know what in tarnation this thing is and what we can do with it?"

Comments

You hold the key to unlocking mankind!

[Anonymous Coward]

That disk is from the future! It holds the encoding of DNA from the human race 100,000 years in the future! They have cured all major disease and live in a utopic creative society! Do you realize what you have got?!?! You can be on the cover of Time Magazine!!!!

a game

[MarkRose]

Anyone know what in tarnation this thing is and what we can do with it?

Play Frizbee?

Another mysterious media

[Sandmann]

I am in possession of another mysterious media, said to be more than twenty years old. It is a black disk, perhaps 50cm diameter, made of a mysterious material that I have not been able to identify. The disk is light and has a small (~5 mm) hole in the middle. It has a spiral shaped groove covering the entire disk with and what looks like 'bands" where the spiral groove is cut deeper. In the outermost and the innermost bands it looks like there is longer between the windings.

Any idea what this could be? Could it be a media left behind by aliens trying to communicate with us?

Re:Another mysterious media

[zygote]

don't bother me with such ramblings.

busy trying to decern the origin of a retangular plastic object with a delicate ribbon of black at one end.

strangely stamped: Best of B.T.O

the aliens are among us!

Re:Entire article is just a troll

[gothzilla]

He can't take a photograph because his other archaic recording device takes 110 film and he can't find it anywhere.

Re:Shot in the dark, courtesy of google groups

[Txiasaeia]

I know this is way offtopic, but I just love this post from that thread:

Sorry, not to harp, but...a Laserdisk as to a CD disk as a Space Shuttle at launch is to OS-360. Both are big, and impressive--each in its way--but one is, if not the pinnacle of cahievement in its field, a milestone on the way; while the other is just a big, ugly abortion. I submit that CD is the latter. The head on a CD disk does make contact with the recording surface, unlike the Laserdisk. Both the media and the read head suffer from this. I've heard a rumor that the CD is to soon be no more, while the future of the Laserdisk seems assured, so let's not mix the two, eh?

In a nitpicking mood,
Dave Ihnat
ihuxx!ignatz

I, for one, welcome our future-assured Laserdisk overlords!