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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?"
Why is Imation so sure it's an analog disk? I've never heard of disks being used for magnetic analog recording. (There's vinyl disks, of course, but they're mechnical recordings.) And why would anybody create one? Once you go to all the trouble of creating the hardware to access the tracks, you're pretty much in the digital world anyway, and might as well go all the way.
I have used such a device in the past. The media were disks with a spiral groove on one side. The groove was used to steer a magnetic recording/playback head. The device had a slider on the front to place the head anywhere on the disk.
I used the device for voice recording and for primitive analog sampling.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Long overdue, I know: a photo of the mystery disc. As I said, it looks very much like the inner portion of an ordinary floppy disk. But we're told it's about 20 years old.